Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) | Hansard source

The government will not be supporting this suspension motion today. I imagine it's not going to be the last one for the week. There is a range of urgent matters before the Senate. I accept that there are so many things this chamber could be debating this week, but there are also a number of very critical pieces of legislation—including the NDIS, our reforms to gambling law, implementing new arrangements for the news media bargaining incentive and dealing with the Treasury laws amendment bills—that this chamber has sought to debate as well.

On the point of urgency, there is no shortage of urgent matters before the Senate this week. Indeed, the Senate has just resolved, earlier today, to put in place arrangements to have those matters dealt with. Notwithstanding the important issue that's being raised by the motion and the fact that the government has already been clear about work that is being done around the integrated assessment tool, we should be allowed to get on to the program that the Senate resolved earlier today to deal with. I note there have been people raising concerns about the amount of time for debate on certain pieces of legislation. These suspension motions will eat into that time. So, again, the government doesn't support this.

I know the chamber has had a lot of debate in relation to the aged-care reforms—important reforms that were supported, I should say, by this chamber last year—to make the aged-care system more sustainable. As the Leader of the Government in the Senate said during question time, we have invested billions of dollars into aged care since coming to government to make sure that we are able to deal with the demand that we're seeing in aged care in both in-home care and residential care, and also in the workers who provide care to elderly Australians. Our commitment is very clear, but we do need to make sure it's on a sustainable footing. The Minister for Aged Care and Seniors is working through a whole range of issues, some of which have been raised in this chamber, and will continue to do so.

But we need the Senate to get on with what is before it this week, which is the other pieces of legislation that are equally urgent and require the attention of the Senate. Those have been listed in the program today. Last week, the Senate did not pass a single bill—