Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

We will not be supporting this amendment, and I want to correct the record on a couple of counts. Firstly, let's be clear: this sitting schedule has been out there for some time now. As I said, it was adopted without dissent in the Senate. And, to the Manager of Opposition Business's suggestion that we have come in here without any notice: he knows full well that his office was informed at around 11:30 that we would seek to bring this on after the ministerial statement about the Ashton review.

As to the substance of the amendment: the Manager of Opposition Business has taken us back to Federation for an average of sitting times, a time when people used to get on a steamship from Perth and on the train from everywhere else, uprooting their entire lives to sit in this place for six or eight weeks at a time

See this speech in context