Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

We can see the talent that they have on their front bench—the parliamentary secretaries who cannot read the Notice Paper! If you had read it you would know that the creation of the assistant minister position is all about the demotion of one person, the member for Parkes, and another person’s—the member for Sturt’s—failure to be promoted. These changes are symptomatic of a government that is out of control in its arrogance, a government that is under pressure, a government that is failing in its obligations to the Australian people on issues, and a government that is determined to hide from proper debate. We saw it again today: the Leader of the Opposition standing up saying: ‘You want to debate Iraq; let’s bring it on. Bring on a televised public debate.’

This is a government that wants to avoid scrutiny—from its own backbench, from the Independents and from the opposition. Labor will oppose these changes and we commit ourselves to overturning them in government, because we think that a good opposition and good parliamentary processes are a foundation stone of parliamentary democracy. You cannot have a one-way system. We accept that it is stacked against us day after day, that the rules are set by those opposite, that we play on their home ground, and that they set the rules and appoint the referee, but this is one debate in the parliament every day which is scrutinised by the Australian people. There are many people out there who are listening to this very debate, who listen to this part of parliament because they know it has been in existence for 106 years. This is not a conservative party; this is not a party that has respect for tradition; this is a neoconservative party that trashes tradition, trashes democracy and trashes open parliamentary processes and debate. If you do not agree with it, it will stomp on you. That is what is happening to the Independents and to the opposition with these provisions being put forward today.

Labor will oppose this proposition. We will stand with the Independents. I call upon those members of the government backbench who are concerned about these issues to join with us to uphold parliamentary standards, because this is an unnecessary attack. No case has been put forward by the Leader of the House to justify these changes. The fact that we will probably see, I predict, a gagging of this debate just underlines how undemocratic this government is—how it has changed since it got control of the numbers in the Senate. (Time expired)

See this speech in context