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

I certainly will. It is not surprising that government ministers are embarrassed. They are embarrassed by their own performance—embarrassed about extending the sittings of the Main Committee when there is no legislation before the Main Committee to consider. It is extraordinary. We can remember back to previous times before elections in 2004, 2001 and 1998. The House was full of legislation. There was a battle of ideas. What do we see from this government? This is a government that is out of ideas and out of legislation. Indeed, the only legislation that it has before this House to consider tends to be legislation amending its own legislation, such as Work Choices, because it has got the fundamentals of its legislation wrong. Surely the first step should be ensuring that the Main Committee does not sit vacant like it did during the last session. The government is putting the cart before the horse. You actually need some legislation before you expand the sittings of the Main Committee. This is in contrast to the solid legislative agenda that Labor has been outlining all year on climate change, on addressing our water crisis, on broadband and on education. I would encourage the government to actually refer the private member’s bill that we have to ratify the Kyoto protocol, for example, to the Main Committee for full debate and then have a vote on it rather than sitting on this legislation and refusing to allow votes in this chamber or proper debate.

It is very clear, and we saw it again today when he was asked a question about the future of education, that the prime minister’s response is all about the past. His response was all about the 1990s—when we were talking about the budget here and through the forward estimates years to 2010-11. So we welcome the opportunity to have more debate and we will be engaging in it. But we say to the government: if you are going to increase sitting times and make these changes then let us have more debate on the policy differences, which are stark, in this election year: the policy differences on addressing our skills crisis, on addressing infrastructure, on the education revolution, on providing broadband, on addressing climate change and the water crisis, on addressing all these issues—

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