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

For the information of members, the Senate, before question time, looked like it was tracking really well, but the Senate has slowed down considerably. Whenever they finish, it'll then be the case—we have the environment legislation, and there's another package of legislation that comes on at about at item No. 5 in debate that also requires amendment, which will have to come back to the House.

That being the case, the most sensible thing for us to do will be to not stay too much longer today. We will come back tomorrow, which will almost certainly be at 9 am. I know that people were scheduled to speak on the adjournment debate, so what I'll do in a moment is move a suspension of standing orders to allow that debate to occur as it would have, only it won't be a debate about adjourning the House; it'll just be five minutes on whatever you want. The speakers who were rostered to speak will get the opportunity to do so.

Once that's concluded, Mr Speaker, it would suit the convenience of the House if you would then suspend the sitting, vacate the chair and return at the ringing of the bells at 9 o'clock tomorrow morning. That's presuming that, at 9 o'clock tomorrow morning, the Senate's finished and we've had transmission, but I think our odds are much better than they would be tonight.

I would have liked to have been able to give members certainty earlier today, but, as soon as I had all of this information confirmed, I privately contacted the Manager of Opposition Business. We passed a message through to the crossbench and, obviously, to yourself, Mr Speaker. I will say that that means we still got an extra day of sittings, so that's good!