Julia Irwin (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, my question relates to the proceedings of the Standing Committee on Family and Human Services, chaired by the member for Mackellar. A meeting was scheduled for 10 am on Monday of this week to continue deliberations on the committee’s report on balancing work and family. I advised the committee secretary that Labor members would not be able to participate as an important party meeting had been called and I requested that the meeting be postponed to later that day. He later informed me that he had spoken to the committee chair, the member for Mackellar, who advised him that the meeting would not be postponed. I phoned the chair to request a postponement and left a message on her mobile phone. The meeting went ahead with a quorum of government members only and proceeded to complete the committee’s deliberations on all remaining sections of the report. The meeting also agreed to allow for out of session tabling of the report and authorised the chair to selectively release the report under standing order 242. My question to you is whether it is contrary to all committee practice in this place that the committee chair holds a meeting to ram through a final report of an inquiry that has been running for two years at a time when no opposition members of the committee can attend because they are voting in a leadership ballot.

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