Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, may I first congratulate you on your elevation to the speakership. I have always been an admirer of your fairness and justice—and I will undertake to sing Danny Boy at the first Bundaberg Rum night! Having put that to one side, I want to talk about a very important thing tonight, and that is these Friday sittings. The government has argued that there is nothing unusual about this because at present we suspend divisions between 6.30 pm and 8 pm in the early part of the week for the dinner break. The point I would make there is that that was consensual. That was on for a short time and it was by consensus. If someone did feel aggrieved, at an absolute maximum the longest it would take to have that matter rectified or tested on the floor of the parliament was 1½ hours. Then we were told the other thing that, in the second chamber, we do not have divisions and that this somehow justifies the Friday scenario that the government is putting to us. The second chamber was put in place, again consensually, to facilitate other opportunities to see minor and non-controversial legislation debated by those who want it. If there was a serious dispute in that chamber, it was referred to this chamber at the earliest opportunity and dealt with.

These are not good analogies, and the government are skating on very thin ice by using them as precedents. The government also use as a form of justification that our party, when in government, cancelled a number of MPIs. What they did not tell the House, and especially the new Labor members, was that, on those days, there was another form of debate, generally a censure, which gave the government of the day, in many instances, the opportunity to debate the very same question. After at least 35 to 40 minutes of that, was it necessary to have an MPI, probably on the same matter, immediately following? No, it was not. So that is a third analogy that lacks validity.

If you were really fair dinkum about this, why would you not have the members’ day on Thursday? If it is true that all your ministers are going to be sitting quietly in their offices on Friday—a claim, I might add, that I am cynical enough to believe will not happen—why not reverse the days, and why not sit the parliament on the Thursday till 8 pm and finish it, say, with a question time at midday or with an MPI at one o’clock on the Friday? Why not do that?

If you were really fair dinkum about ministers being in their offices and the backbenchers—particularly opposition backbenchers—not being exploited, then I challenge you: what possible objection would you have to a Thursday, if you are not happy with a Monday? If you want to be truthful, in talking about the number of question times, why would you not have one on that day? If you are talking about MPIs in the context of five days of sitting, and three out of four days was valid under the old arrangements, why would four out of five days not be valid under the new arrangements? We have generally conceded in the past that it is not necessary to have an MPI on a day when private members’ business is the dominant matter because in theory question time, though it has not always been so since the introduction of the Dorothy Dixer, was the time for members, including backbenchers, to test the government. On every ground this lacks any substance.

Let me give you the practical example of what happens in electorates. I, for one, take the matter of being back in my electorate on Friday very seriously. I cannot get home on Thursday night, so I am up at half past four to get the very first plane to Brisbane on a Friday morning to get home to my electorate by about 9.30. When daylight saving is off, I cannot make that connection. It is bad enough then that I do not get back to my office till about midday, but if you translate that scenario to a sitting Friday I will not get home till probably mid-morning on a Saturday. So what happens to a member like me who cannot get home on the Friday night? You go to your electorate on Friday, you get home late morning or midday on Saturday and on Sunday at 10 past 10 you get on the plane to come back to Canberra. Is that a proper use of the government’s or the parliament’s resources? What do you have time to do? Unless there were a really important function in your electorate at some time in the afternoon or the evening of Saturday, what purpose would there be in going home? Do you go and spend a couple of thousands of dollars of the ratepayers’ money going home to do your washing? That is the effect of this motion. You would be going home to do little more than your washing. It is all right for members who can get home on the night or in the late afternoon of the day when the parliament adjourns.

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