Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Industry and Innovation) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, I want to acknowledge the way the government has handled the presentation of the sitting calendar this year. My office received a copy of the proposed sitting calendar at 1.43 pm today. That was 13 minutes before question time, so I thank them for those 13 minutes to consider the sitting calendar and what it entails. It's disappointing that it couldn't be provided with more notice, but there you have it. With all those extra staff, they were unable to get us that notice earlier.

Now I go to the substantive issues. The Leader of the House has brushed over a few things in the sitting timetable that he proposes for the House. The government is proposing that we sit 66 days next year, or just 18 weeks. With the exception of 2024, when we sat for 64 days only, you'd have to go back to 2020 to find another time when we sat for fewer days. That was during a once-in-a-century pandemic. To put it another way, the last time we sat for fewer than 66 days in the House of Representatives for a full year after an election was in 2011. If you went back to the future—if you got in that DeLorean, and you went back to 2011—who was the Leader of the House in 2011? Oh dear, it was the Leader of the House. He doesn't seem to like parliamentary sittings or scrutiny of the House of Representatives.

There is a question that I think this House needs to address. I've got a solution, being a constructive opposition member. Taking the Leader of the Opposition's instructions to all of us to be more constructive, we are going be more constructive. I've got a constructive solution to this issue. The question we all want to know, and the parliament and the people of Australia are asking is: will the part-time Minister for Climate Change and Energy be around to attend any of these sitting days at all? So I move, as an amendment to the motion moved by the Leader of the House, something that all members in this House can support because we all want it:

That the Minister for Climate Change and Energy be required to attend each of the parliamentary sitting days in the House of Representatives during 2026.

A government member interjecting —

There are only 66 of them—to that interjection—therefore, this is not an onerous requirement on the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. It is such a low amount that he should be present on those 66 days to answer the questions that we have, and, yes, we have a lot of questions. I recommend this motion to you. You want the minister to be here. We want the minister to be here. Who here would not like the Minister for Climate Change and Energy to be here? The member for Parramatta is not here, and it's unfair to ask this question when the member for Parramatta is not here, but I move my amendment. I encourage the leader to support this particular motion as amended.

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