Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I have something to raise with the House. I've had preliminary conversations, but, because we're about to go to the next bill, the Safeguard Mechanism (Crediting) Amendment Bill 2022, this will be the only chance for me to deal with it. What I may do is explain it now and then come back in an hour, because it relates to the bill that's before us, so the speech will still be valid.

The government wants to deal with this bill this week. At the moment, in terms of the length of the speaking list, we will get through it in the normal time, but I'm very conscious that members have the right to add themselves to the speaking list, and frequently that has happened. I'm trying to avoid a circumstance where we have to cut the speaking time or cut the number of speeches in any way, and I know that people will want there to be full time for consideration in detail.

The resolution that, I want to advise, I'll return to the House to move in an hour—if people want to talk to me about it, by all means, and I have spoken to the Manager of Opposition Business about this and I want to thank him for those consultations—is the following procedure that we would follow today, and then I'll put something on the Notice Paper to deal with tomorrow: we would keep speaking times at the full time; tonight between 7.30 and eight o'clock we would still do the normal adjournment debate, so people who've prepared speeches would get to give them, but we would not in fact adjourn; and then, from eight o'clock until 10 o'clock, there would be speeches on this bill. Then we'll have a look tomorrow at how many people want to speak to see if we need to do a similar extension tomorrow night. To do it otherwise, we would have been in a circumstance where either tomorrow night would have to go very late or we would have to cut the speaking times, and I don't want to do either.

So that's the nature of the resolution. The resolution I would move today only refers to today, and it allows the adjournment debate to happen and then, between 8 pm and 10 pm, speeches to continue in that time. There would be no vote tonight and, if we ran out of speeches, the bill would still be listed for tomorrow; we wouldn't take that as being that we were ready to go. It would simply allow an additional eight speeches to be sorted through tonight without members having to remain, and we will have the normal rules about divisions and quorums: from 6.30 on, none of that would take place. So I've advised the House of that. If we work on the basis that, at the first opportunity after 5.30, I intend to move that, hopefully we won't have a debate, so we will not be interrupting any more time on the bill itself.