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

I have to say, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I am so glad he put that on the record, because the Leader of the Opposition said the exact opposite. The Leader of the Opposition was saying, ‘We believe our constituents will be disadvantaged by our not being in our electorates.’ The Leader of the Opposition says he believes the constituents will be disadvantaged by this, and yet he says he is willing to support sitting on Fridays. He wants to change all the rules. He says he is willing to go along with sitting on Fridays but he says he believes his constituents will be disadvantaged. I do not share that concern. I actually think our constituents do well by the advocacy that we run in this parliament. I am surprised that he thinks so little of his own role that he is willing to say that, if they are not there on a Friday, if he is not out in his electorate on a Friday but is—allegedly—representing his constituents in the parliament, they are being disadvantaged by that. But, if he does believe they are being disadvantaged by that, he should not come in here and argue, ‘We’ll go along with the change but it is just the question time bit that we care about’ or ‘it is just the MPI bit that we care about.’

The truth is what the opposition cares about in this is their own working day. The very same group of people that was willing to carve up the working day of working families in Australia suddenly finds a new level of passion and a new level of energy that no radio interview has shown, that no speech has shown and that no in-depth interview on one of the Sunday morning programs has shown. Today in this parliament we get venom, we get passion and we get real anger. We get people like the current Manager of Opposition Business and like the current—and I use the word ‘current’ carefully—Leader of the Opposition showing this level of absolute passion: ‘While we might be willing to get rid of the working conditions of other people, don’t get rid of the working conditions of members of the Liberal Party and the National Party in this place.’

We do not think it is that outrageous for parliament to sit five days a week, and we certainly do not think it is outrageous to replace a system where there used to be four question times with a new system where there will be four question times. We do not think it is outrageous to replace a system where there used to be three MPIs with a new system where there will be three MPIs. But we do think it is important to make sure that we no longer get rid of 17 days of private members’ business. We believe it is important that when local members of parliament put a motion on the Notice Paper they actually have a chance of its being debated. We want to make sure that when local members of parliament want to participate in the grievance debate on behalf of their constituents they actually get the opportunity to do so here in this parliament. One of the interjections that came over earlier from members of the opposition was, ‘Oh, well, they’ve got the Main Committee in which to do that.’ Sorry, but the Main Committee was never set up as a way of preventing local members of parliament from ever being able to advocate in this room. This room is not meant to be the wholly owned subsidiary of the executive so backbench members of parliament never have an opportunity to speak. That might be the vision of some people who were in the previous government, but that is certainly not the way that this government runs things. If you want to fix that, you have to allocate dedicated time for private members’ business.

See this speech in context