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

I wrote to the Prime Minister on behalf of the Greens in September and then again in October recommending extra sitting weeks for the Senate be considered by the government, before we got to the situation we are now in. You will be aware, Madam Acting Deputy President, that this is one of the shortest sitting schedules for a non-election year since the Second World War, even though we have huge issues to deal with on behalf of the nation. I have received no response from the Prime Minister at all. I have received two letters from the leader in the Senate, but neither of them responded to the proposal to have an extra sitting week last week or indeed extra sitting weeks at the start of December. The government effectively ignored a very sensible proposal that we deal with the coming load in a considered way. When I say ‘considered’ I am taking into account that all of us have big electoral commitments. We need to keep those commitments with our electorates. We do not need to be working on an ad hoc basis where we do not know whether we are going to be able to make those commitments. It disrupts a whole lot of other people’s lives as well as our own. However, at the end of each year you get extra pressure put onto the Senate, and we tend to sit extended hours.

The reality here is that we are waiting—perhaps till the weekend, as Senator Ludwig pointed out—for a decision by the government and coalition to come together to put to the parliament a rejigged emissions trading scheme package of legislation, and we do not know what that outcome will be. The proposal here is that we have the second reading debate on legislation that we are not acquainted with. We know what the government wants; we do not know what outcome there will be from the government and the coalition. We have already had it flagged that agriculture will be dropped from the legislation, and we can assume that will be the case. But we cannot debate that, because it is not in the legislation before us. In fact it says in the legislation before us that agriculture will be considered by 2013 and included by 2015, if that consideration points to it being included as part of the reach of this legislation.

We are in the extraordinary situation of being about to embark on a debate about legislation which is far from finalised, which we do not have before us and which we cannot, I put to you, Madam Acting Deputy President, sensibly debate in this circumstance. Why is that? It is because the executive—that is, the Prime Minister’s office—has a schedule of negotiating with the opposition which is going on extramural, outside the Senate, but without the Senate being informed. We are being treated as a necessary routine to go through but not the equal second house of the parliament which is the watchdog of the people’s interests, and I object to that. I also object to not getting a response from the government on a matter as important as the scheduling of the Senate when a sensible, more contemplated, far-sighted proposition was put to the government by the Greens a month or two months ago. We are not going to be simply subservient to the government in this adhockery. We will not be supporting this motion. There is no cogent reason which warrants us extending sitting hours tonight to continue a second reading debate on legislation we do not properly have in front of us. We will not be supporting that extension.