Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Because we have such a congested and important list of matters to deal with in the next five days of sittings, I am not going to oppose this motion from the government. However, the precedent here of the government moving to amend private members’ time is not a good one. It is a matter for the opposition and the crossbench. We get very little time in this place and I do not believe the government should be ordering the business for private members. Moreover, as I have made clear a number of times before, I think private members’ time ought to be not only kept intact but also, in fact, extended.

I will not get into a debate now about the need for a much better defined private members’ time with the ability for private members legislation to pass, but we will be having a debate on that soon enough. The move here is really to enable government business to be brought back on at the expense of private members’ business when there are important pieces of legislation that I think should be dealt with. I have a contrary view to the government on this. The Greens have a contrary view to the government on this. While we are not going to get into a long debate about this at the moment, it is very important that that view be heard by the government.