Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

You are doing better than Brendan, Wilson. That is a good start. I recall time after time the former government putting legislation to this parliament without any serious opportunity for the opposition to consider that legislation—legislation on absolutely critical issues of fundamental importance to this nation. Now they have the gall to stand up here and complain that they have received inadequate notice of changes to the standing orders that were publicly identified several weeks ago. They are the same people who were prepared to stand up here and introduce legislation on fundamentally important issues to the Australian people virtually without notice. They gave the opposition and the crossbench members virtually no opportunity to seriously consider the content of that legislation. They now have the absolute gall to complain about the amount of notice they get on changes that have been previously flagged by the government. That is simply astonishing.

It is also worth considering some of the specific propositions that the new Leader of the Opposition put forward. I have to say, first impressions count in this game. Today, we have seen a pretty ordinary start. The opposition leader has lost none of the unctuousness and the sophistry that carried him so well in his ministerial positions in the previous government. He is suggesting that we are going to be reducing the accountability of government as a result of these changes. In fact, the amount of government business time is actually going to increase—in other words, the opportunity for the parliament to hold the executive accountable on the most fundamental thing, legislation, will actually increase. The amount of time available to debate legislation will actually increase. The amount of question times being scheduled by the government will be actually higher for the forthcoming year than the average amount of question times per annum that occurred under the Howard government.

I notice that the opposition leader also complained about the fact that the Leader of the House identified through the media that these changes were going to occur. Again, this is the same group of people who routinely announced major policy changes and major government initiatives through the media, without announcing them in the parliament, without indicating to the parliament what the government’s priorities were. They made it a matter of routine to announce major initiatives through the media—on the Sunday morning TV shows, you name it. It happened time after time. Now, somehow, because they are in opposition, an indication in December—some time before the parliament is due to sit—through the media that the government is intending to make changes to the way that the parliament works is some kind of heinous offence. It really is an absurd proposition.

I noticed also that Dr Nelson, the opposition leader, stated that the Friday sittings that the government proposes will not be fair dinkum—that somehow they will not be real. Apart from anything else, this demonstrates extraordinary contempt for backbenchers, and extraordinary contempt for ordinary members of parliament and the private members’ business that will be transacted on those Fridays. And I noticed that the opposition leader complained about the possibility that perhaps not all ministers may be present during the transacting of this private members’ business. Can I ask the opposition leader how many Mondays he was in here, sitting in private members’ business and listening to the private members’ motions? How many Mondays was he loyally sitting in here listening even to the members of his own party making grievance speeches and doing private members’ motions? Somehow, transferring this from the Monday to the Friday—and I may not be here; I may be in my office or at a committee meeting or something like that—is dreadful, somehow it is wrong!

But the most extraordinary thing about the opposition leader’s contribution here and about the fact that he and his colleagues have listed over 40 speakers to speak on this motion is what it says about the priorities of the new opposition. Of all the issues that we in this parliament are now facing, of all the major themes that we have to grapple with, this is the big thing. This is the major issue, for which we have to line up virtually the entire caucus, the entire Liberal Party and National Party, to speak on. We actually pay to this issue the compliment of having the opposition leader make his first substantial speech in the parliament on this issue—working on Fridays. That is the issue that they are upset about: the prospect of a five-day working week.

It is not a big debate about whether or not we should have an apology to Indigenous Australians. That debate has been going on in public within the Liberal Party and the National Party, the coalition. They still have not quite worked out where they stand. They are divided; they are confused. It is not a debate about whether or not Work Choices is dead. The opposition leader says that Work Choices is dead. At the same time his deputy is out there with a shovel digging up the corpse, trying to revive it, trying to breathe life back into Frankenstein’s monster. It is not a debate about that, though, is it? It is not a debate about whether or not Work Choices, individual contracts and the ability to rip away penalty rates and overtime from ordinary working people should be in the legislation of this country. It is not about those issues either. And it is not about inflation. It is not about whether or not we need to cut back on government spending. The shadow Treasurer, the member for Wentworth, says that is all a fairytale. The Leader of the Opposition says that the former government left the economy in absolutely tiptop shape, absolutely perfect shape. He says that everything is fine, there is no problem.

None of these issues warrants a serious assault on the government, a serious attempt to create a major public policy debate in their first attempt as an opposition. The big issue is whether or not you get to turn up on Fridays, whether or not there should be a five-day parliamentary sitting week—that is the big issue! It tells you everything about the new Leader of the Opposition and everything about the new opposition. The hypocrisy of their position, where they are now standing up and advocating positions that they violently opposed and trod all over for the previous 12 years, really is breathtaking. I commend the motion to the House.

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