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

I move:

That the Deputy Speaker's ruling be dissented from.

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to defend the chair, and I rise to defend you and your ruling, Madam Deputy Speaker Claydon. I rise to defend, Madam Deputy Speaker, your right to make rulings.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I need to check that the motion for dissent has been seconded. Who has seconded it? We need to follow the procedure correctly, and then we can deal with it.

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

The minister doesn't know what he's talking about.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No-one's got the call. You do not have the call, Manager of Opposition Business. You're moving a dissent. We need to follow the procedure, which means you need to have it in writing with a seconder. Have you got that? I haven't seen it.

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

Are you asking me? I have moved the motion. I have submitted the motion. It has a mover and a seconder.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you. Now the debate can take place.

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

We are in the incredible situation today where the minister at the table is defending his new role as president of COP31 and saying our attempt to say to the Australian people that he will be part time as he will be busy overseas, serving interests there rather than working on the power prices of Australians and Australian businesses, is unparliamentary. It is outrageous that, in this parliament, you can't make the case that members or ministers are not full time in the interests of the Australian people. Why not? Why can't that argument be made to the Australian parliament?

Let me remind the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, who should remember this, that the Prime Minister who sat in this chamber and said that his ministers would be part time was his predecessor Paul Keating. He made that case. It was a serious topic of debate in this House—part-time and full-time ministers. There would be a rotation where ministers only turned up on the days that Prime Minister Keating said they would turn up. It was such a disgrace that Prime Minister Keating had to back down and, under pressure from the opposition, return ministers to being present every single question time.

Let's look at the record of the member for McMahon, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. He missed one day of scrutiny from the opposition or the people of Australia in this parliament because of his new role. So we have the perfect right to mount a case to Australians—the perfect right in debate, in general debate, to use the term 'part time'. It's perfectly okay. It is not unprofessional. It is not unparliamentary. It has real meaning because he is part time. He wasn't here to face the questions of the opposition or the Australian people. The minister was in the job overseas that we have been complaining about, not focused on Australians' energy prices.

In question time today, we heard from so many people here in opposition about what they're hearing from their electorates, such as business owners whose power bills are up 70 per cent—if you're listening at the moment, Minister. We've heard from individuals whose power bills have gone up substantially since this government got elected. And, yes, we have made the case that the minister's new role will mean that he is not fully occupied with fixing a 70 per cent increase in the power bills of certain businesses. We are making the case that part time is absolutely legitimate in this case—that he won't be fully engaged in the interests of Australians whose power bills are going through the roof. In fact, it's not only fair debate; it's an essential provision of democracy that we be allowed to say: 'This minister wasn't present to answer questions. This minister wasn't available on a parliamentary sitting day—when we had these questions on Monday.' We had them today. We were not sure if he would be back here today, but he slipped back into the country. The president returned! We asked him questions. If we are to make the case that his full-time role at COP31—and it is a full-time role, let's be honest. It's a role that will require money from Australian taxpayers to fund the staff that he will need. It will require bureaucrats to give him advice. It has real public and finance issues, and it's for the minister to defend his position, not the Speaker. It's for the minister to defend his position, not the Deputy Speaker. It's for the minister to say, 'My role is full time; my role is part time. Here's why. When I'm missing from parliament, it's okay.'

Prime Minister Paul Keating made the case that his ministers didn't need to be here every single day in question time. That's the case he made, and it went very badly in front of the Australian people. Paul Keating stood here and said that it's okay to roster on a minister and roster them off. Now we have Prime Minister Albanese telling us that it's okay for Minister Bowen to not be here because he is the    President of Negotiations in COP. Minister, we say that it's not okay. We say it's okay to mount a case part time or full time. We say that it's okay to use the language 'part-time' or 'full-time'. There is a slippery slope that we are on, and I know that the Leader of the House knows this. If we start banning 'part-time' and 'full-time' from our lexicon, we will be banning a lot of words. There will be a slippery slope of speakers from this day until every day of this parliament banning a new term and banning a new procedure for debate.

Every instinct of parliamentary democracy since Athens says you can use language in debate. Free speech says it. We know where free speech doesn't occur, don't we? The Prime said it today. 'We've got one view,' said the Prime Minister. Of course, you've got one view. There's no point looking at me and laughing or pointing and carrying on. You're not allowed to have a view. None of you on the backbench is allowed to have a view; we know that. Free speech requires language. Language is important. 'Part-time' is not offensive. It isn't unparliamentary. We're not making the reference in reference to his title. The opposition is making—

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I need to bring you back to your dissent from my ruling about holding the Speaker's ruling. So just come back to that, and I will ask all members opposite also to just calm this down a little bit while we discuss sensibly this ruling.

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

We know this is a government with a 50 per cent majority. We understand that. That does not give them the right to be a dictatorship. That does not give them the right to trample on parliamentary democracy. It does not give this arrogant minister the right to say that, if we criticise him for being a part-time minister when he has been absent from this parliament, that he will be defended from the Speaker's chair—yes, I'm speaking to the dissent—because that should not be the case. The executive has enough protections. The minister has enough in place to protect his honour—the president's honour. The Speaker is not required to defend the minister's part-time or full-time nature. He should do it himself. So should members of the government. That's fair debate. It's fair debate in this place to use the term 'part-time'. It's fair to use 'full-time'. It's fair to say that a minister is part time or full time, and I think that will stand.

There can be no argument that you can make that says 'part-time' or 'full-time' is unparliamentary. There can be no argument that says this is an abuse of the standing orders. I regret that this has happened. I regret that we are here, but if we are here, we will not shirk from the debate every single day that, if you have a full-time role overseas serving other interests, you will not be in the service of Australians and their power bills. Households and businesses are struggling and require a minister who is full time. I think that if fair-minded members of this parliament, wherever they sit, were allowed to have a view, they would say, 'Maybe this shouldn't have happened.'

The rules for questions are not the rules for debate. The separation in the standing orders is very clear. Rules for questions do not include the standing orders that cover the general provisions for debate. It is an attempt by the Albanese Labor government to cover up the fact that they have a part-time minister. It is nothing else but that.

A government member: You are reflecting on him again!

No; I am reflecting on the government. We do disagree with the Deputy Speaker. We do disagree with this ruling. We accepted the Speaker's ruling in relation to question time, but we will not accept a ruling that says it is unfair for a part-time member of the executive who turns up only when they get back from an overseas trip and who might be away 10 or 20 days next year—we don't know—from the parliamentary schedule. We want you to be here to face these questions. It's fair to say you're working part time if you're not here to answer questions, and it should be fair, in reasonable debate in this place, to be allowed to say that a member like the COP President of Negotiations is absent from question time when he should be here.

Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion. If the Leader of the Opposition uses a descriptor about a minister being part time, there is no reason why that would be unparliamentary or out of order. It was not a title bestowed upon the minister by the Leader of the Opposition; it was a descriptor. It begs the question of what else we should use in its place. Should he be the 'intermittent' minister—when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining, the minister isn't working? Is that how we should describe this minister? Maybe the 'irregular' minister—one who relies only on batteries? The battery only works for two hours, and then there's nothing.

Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The dispatchable minister!

Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is he the 'dispatchable' minister? I think not. But I can tell you what I cannot call him. He is not the 'base-load' minister. He's not the minister that's on 24 hours a day. He's not the minister that's providing affordable energy to the Australian people. He's not those things.

I would have absolutely no concern if our side of this House were brought to order for actually calling him 'competent' or saying that he was doing Australia a favour in his role. But he is not. He is occasional, he is irregular, he is intermittent and he is incompetent, and this side of the House should have every right to speak freely not on the part of the coalition but on the part of the Australian people—on the part of the senior citizens who will go to Christmas without knowing if they can feed themselves or heat their house. That's on whose behalf we speak. We speak on behalf of the small businesses who are closing their doors because this government cannot manage the electricity grid and because this minister is intermittent. That is the problem. Yet we are told that we are not allowed in this House to call him a 'part-time' minister.

What I think is revealing here is—do you know who jumped to his feet? Guess who jumped to his feet to complain? The intermittent one himself! 'Oh, dear! They called me something,' he said. It's not very presidential, is it? It's not very presidential of him. He's very proud of his role. He's already spoken publicly—he's spoken from the dispatch box—about how important he is and how much power he has. He doesn't deliver any power, but he's spoken about how much power he has. Now he's excited because it's about him. I don't know how many times we have had MPIs in this chamber while he's been the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, but he's never turned up—not once! He's as reliable as his energy system is! But, then, there's a new topic, the topic is him, and here he is! We now know how to get him. He's not part time when it's about him, is he?

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for Fairfax, you're actually debating why you're dissenting from my upholding of the Speaker's ruling.

Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

All of these are reasons why we should be able to describe this minister as working only part time.

I don't know what's worse here. Is it the fact that he only works part time? It could be worse. Can you imagine how bad it would be if he were full time? Maybe we've got this wrong after all. God help us—can you imagine if he actually tried harder with the Australian energy system? Oh deary! God knows we wouldn't have any electricity at all. We'd all become candlestick makers.

I second this motion because this chamber deserves not just freedom of speech but the freedom to speak the truth, and the truth is this minister is part time and incompetent.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I give the call to the Leader of the Opposition—the Leader of the House.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I knew they were looking to change. I didn't know it went that far.

Hon. Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A little bit of order please. I'm stating the question, which is that my ruling to uphold the Speaker's ruling is now being dissented from.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government certainly will be voting to uphold your ruling. I say to the opposition, in this entire tactic, just two words: own goal. There are times in opposition when you move a motion of dissent, but start with this principle: at any point in time, it is always in the interests of the opposition for things that can be said to be as restricted as possible. There would be times when the term, if it was an electricity bill or something and Bronwyn Bishop was in the chair—she was in the chamber today. We'd always argue, 'You need to be more restricted.' That's always in the interest of the opposition. This is the first time I can imagine an opposition wanting to open the net wider, particularly on how members are addressed. But then, to have a ruling that was fine by them when it was given by the Speaker, but, on today of all days, the moment the same ruling is made by the Deputy Speaker, they have a problem with it—but then it goes one step further. This, certainly—I've had more time that I wanted in opposition. There was always this rule: that the thing that you don't do is grandstand and prevent your leader from giving a speech on the MPI.

Effectively, you've got the time that government business doesn't take up—that we reserve for the MPI—and everyone there knows the consequences of what happens when there's a dissent motion moved instead. Effectively, we've had the shadow Treasurer and the Manager of Opposition Business decide that the speeches they just gave were more important than what their leader had prepared and had submitted to the Speaker and the speech that their leader had started to give. This is the consequence of what they have done. To have a situation where the shadow Treasurer and the Manager of Opposition Business decide, a few minutes into the speech of the Leader of the Opposition, 'enough of that' and that they want to be the ones in the sun and that they'll be the ones getting the attention and they'll be the ones because their rhetoric is more important than what had been prepared by the Leader of the Opposition is—I want to say it's a bad tactic, but I don't know how you can even describe it as a tactic, because to use those roles to prevent your leader from giving a speech in the MPI that's been prepared in that way is extraordinary.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for Wannon, is this a point of order?

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can you direct the member back to the actual motion.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sit down.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They had moments when they tried to be relevant to the dissent. One of their arguments was to say that they were okay with it during question time, but they weren't going to allow it in places other than question time. I'd simply say refer to the standing orders. When a ruling is made on the principle of what you are allowed to say in a question, then, yeah, there are different rules on what happens during question time and what happens outside. When a ruling is given about what you're allowed to say in an answer, there are different standing orders for what happens during question time and what happens outside. When a ruling is given about addressing members by their title, the standing orders don't distinguish. It's exactly the same.

I'm trying to work out what the difference is for those opposite between the exact same ruling being given by the Speaker and it being given shortly after by the deputy speaker. I am trying to work out why they might respond differently to an identical ruling, because, when the ruling was made during question time, they all accepted it. When the ruling was made during question time and someone had to leave question time as a result of that ruling, there was no dissent there. But there was dissent moved when the deputy speaker was in the chair. There was dissent moved when it would prevent the Leader of the Opposition from completing the MPI.

In terms of own goals, this one is breathtaking. Maybe, tomorrow, the tactics committee will allow the Leader of the Opposition to put in the same MPI again—the first few minutes—and we'll hear what it is. But to have a situation where, in a whole lot of what they had said in terms of the Minister for Climate Change and Energy—they were saying, 'He doesn't take MPIs.' He's here. He's been sitting here. You've got a day when it's meant to be the most elevated moment—an opposition can decide when they put their leader forward for the MPI. At that exact moment, you've got the relevant cabinet minister at the table ready to debate. Then you get two others who say, 'Oh, no!' They want to have their 'look at me' moment, and it's going to be about them instead, because they want to make an argument, which was already disproved during question time, about the fact that the previous presidents in charge of negotiations have also been cabinet ministers in their own governments.

The whole narrative doesn't make sense on a policy level. It doesn't make sense on a procedural level. It doesn't make sense in parliamentary tactics. Maybe it makes sense in internal tactics. Maybe this is a moment of mild instability within the opposition. Maybe we're seeing a situation where, for some reason, there are some of those opposite who aren't that keen on the Leader of the Opposition being able to be given the moment that was given with the MPI. At any rate, the consequences that will occur now are consequences that everybody knew of when they started this. The rest of the speech from the Leader of the Opposition we will have to wait another day for because we all had to listen to the dulcet tones and the extraordinary, soaring rhetoric of the Manager of Opposition Business and the shadow Treasurer.

I say to those opposite: this motion was not our idea. Having a half-hour interruption in the middle of the speech of the Leader of the Opposition is something you might think would be a government tactic, but this one is entirely their own. They can explain afterwards to their colleagues. They can explain afterwards to the Leader of the Opposition why this ridiculous stunt that makes no sense in procedure on an argument that makes no sense in policy was more important than the speech that the Leader of the Opposition was due to give.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the ruling be dissented from.