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

‘Like the Mondays,’ the member for O’Connor says. That is right: the Mondays where 17 out of 53 never happened! Mind you, there have been times in the past when parliament has sat on a Friday. It did not happen during the last term, but there have been times when parliament has sat on a Friday because there was legislation that had to kick over—we had to wait for a message to come back from the Senate. So what did we do? We used to pretend it was still Thursday. That is what we used to do. We would let the House go until about midnight or shortly after, we would then adjourn and when we came back on the Friday we would pretend it was still Thursday. That is the way in which the previous government used to have very occasional Friday sittings without there being a question time. We are making sure that parliament will sit longer than it used to. We are making sure that parliamentarians will have the opportunity, one that used to be taken from them, to actually represent their constituencies.

If there were ever a signal of what the opposition believe passionately in and of how clearly they care about this issue, it would be to look at the order of speakers. On this issue they have put forward 46 speakers on their list. I will be the final speaker for the government, but we are looking forward to hearing—if they want to go through all the 46 on their list—their speakers. We are here to listen. It is an interesting circular list. It begins with the Leader of the Opposition and the member for North Sydney, both of them from the north side of Sydney. It ends with the member for Macarthur, who is also now from the north side of Sydney. So there is a lovely circularity to the speaking order and I want to see it run all the way, beginning on the North Shore of Sydney and ending on the North Shore of Sydney.

There is a reason why the people opposite fell out of touch; there is a reason why it happened. It is that sort of contempt in their thinking: ‘Let’s have a quick slogan. Let’s find something to complain about. Let’s just have a quick slogan and put the message out and maybe the public will buy it. Maybe we’ll be able to bluff it through.’ There comes a point where those sorts of arguments run out. If anyone from the other side wants to come up here and argue that somehow parliamentary business is going to suffer and accountability is going to suffer under this new system, then they will have to explain why four in 2008 is a smaller number than four was in 2007—because the number of question times is the same. They will have to explain why three MPIs in 2008 are fewer than three MPIs in 2007. As a group of people who did not put things through the Procedure Committee, as a group of people who readily gagged debate, as a group of people who dumped on this parliament most significant legislation to take away the rights of working families and started the debate without a copy of the bill even being in the room, they do not have a lot to start with. But by the time they get to the member for Macarthur, who has recently moved to the north side of Sydney, it is going to be a great finish.

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