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

I move:

That standing order 31 (automatic adjournment of the House) and standing order 33 (limit on business) be suspended for the sitting commencing on Thursday, 7 December 2023.

For the information of members, this is the standard one that leaders of the House usually move on the final day of the year, where there are final aspects of legislation that might come through from the Senate, to make sure that we're still able to receive any messages that come from the Senate.

For the information of members on where things are tracking, while I always advise members on the final day to still be here on the Friday morning, at the moment I think that is unlikely. I think there is every likelihood that we will be finished today sometime between 5 pm and 6 pm. As I get further information from the Senate, I'll continue to keep members informed.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I indicate on behalf of the coalition that we treat with very considerable scepticism the honeyed assurances from the Leader of the House that this is perfectly standard behaviour and nothing to be concerned about. Let me remind the House that the reason we're at this point—and the reason that the Leader of the House is scrambling for extra time and therefore moving, as he is now, to negative the adjournment so that the House would need to continue sitting—is that the government has repeatedly been caught unprepared and has left things to the last minute. Of course, back in September/October this year, the government cancelled a week of sittings to facilitate the Prime Minister's extensive, discursive, meandering travel program and, in response, put just one additional day into the sitting timetable: today. So we've had this quite extraordinary arrangement where this week the Senate's been sitting but only one day has been scheduled for the House.

We've also seen a consistent pattern of chaos and disorganisation from this government when it comes to its legislative program and its legislative strategy over the past several sitting weeks. We had, of course, a High Court decision which caught the government completely flat-footed. After releasing well over 100 hardened criminals, the government then spent several days saying, 'There's no need for legislation,' even though the opposition was pointing out that in fact legislation was not only possible but indeed desperately needed. It took three parliamentary sitting days before the government began to take that suggestion seriously. At 8 am on the Thursday of that particular sitting week—and I'm talking about not the last sitting week but the sitting week before—the government finally shared some draft legislation with the opposition, having evidently had the public servants work all night to prepare it, because they hadn't been prepared; they hadn't done the work. Similarly, on this side of the House we've spent weeks saying to the government that what you need to do is legislate provisions to establish a preventive detention regime. We again had weeks of indolence and inaction from the government, and then all of a sudden it was a desperate scramble.

The coalition makes the point that this negativing of the adjournment that the Leader of the House has now moved, this disruption to the normal and settled procedures of the House, is entirely unnecessary and is wholly a consequence of serial mismanagement, chaos, lack of coordination, lack of planning, lack of preparing for entirely foreseeable scenarios and a mentality of leaving everything to the last minute. This is a government which is in chaos and disarray. The fact that this motion has been moved is simply more evidence of that. I indicate that the opposition is entirely unpersuaded that this is necessary or desirable.

Question agreed to.