Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate you on your election today, Madam Deputy Speaker Burke. We are already at the longest first day of parliament that this House has seen. We are here debating and we have had the other side alleging that there has been a lack of consultation. I want to deal with the consultation issue before I hit any of the substantive issues themselves.

First of all, we just heard from the member for Wide Bay that the way to introduce changes to procedures is always to do it through the Standing Committee on Procedure prior to introduction. Let us not forget the last time we had a change in procedure in this House. The last time it occurred was with a change to the MPI rules. The previous Leader of the House was sick of the Independent members jumping for the call during MPIs, so, instead of allowing the MPI to go for as long as members of parliament chose to jump, the government put a time limit on it. Did that go to the Procedure Committee prior to the decision, because that was the last time that the previous government made a change to procedures? Did that go to the Procedure Committee? No, it did not go to the Procedure Committee. We found out about it when it was put on the Notice Paper the day before. We came in that morning, had a look at it, and that was when we found out about it. The complaint about lack of consultation at the moment is a complaint about something that was announced weeks and weeks ago, something that was made clear a very long time ago. We get told: ‘We knew about the detail—that was not necessarily a problem—but we hadn’t seen the piece of paper.’

Let us not forget a rather significant ‘piece of paper’ that went through this very chamber during the last parliament—a ‘piece of paper’ that ran for about 700 pages called Work Choices. I remember sitting over there on that side when we started the debate, and not one member of the parliament was even able to have a copy of the bill. The bill itself was not available to the parliament when the parliament began debating it! And now we hear a complaint about something that only runs for a page and a half: ‘We only got the final detail five hours earlier.’ We were expected to commence debate on something that was going to tear out the rights of working families. When we came to the chamber to debate it, the copies still had not reached this chamber. So, please, if you want to have an argument about the substantive issues, have an argument about the substantive issues, but don’t come crawling into the chamber complaining about the lack of procedure when what you have been given, in every sense, is way in excess of what the previous government ever offered the then opposition—ever.

So what do these changes mean? What is it that the opposition are actually getting outraged about? Well, we used to have three MPIs in the course of a week. And, outrageously, this year we are going to have, in the course of a week, three MPIs. In the course of a week we also used to have four question times. And, outrageously, this year, in the course of a week, we are going to have four question times. But what is also going to happen is that we are no longer going to be getting rid of private members’ business. We are no longer going to be having the situation, as we had in the last parliament, where the executive says, ‘What backbenchers want to move in private members’ business or what people want to talk about in a grievance debate—we’ll just knock those off the agenda every time we aren’t able to keep up with the program.’ Of the 53 weeks of sitting in the last parliament, on 17 occasions there was no private members’ business at all. By having the Friday sittings we are guaranteeing that private members’ business will no longer be knocked off. That is what used to happen. So we are going to a situation where you will get the same number of question times, you will get the same number of MPIs, but the backbench will be guaranteed to be able to have their say.

It is probably no surprise that the current frontbench of the coalition is a bit upset. I have to say, if there were ever a group of people who would have a clear incentive to make sure their backbench did not have too much to say, it would be the current opposition. They have gone through this period of wanting to find something to be passionate about. We had the speeches and we heard the interviews on what they would be passionate about. Are they passionate about saving Work Choices? Some of them say they are; some of them say they are not. They will go back and forth trying to work out what issues they will be passionate about there.

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