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

Heaven forbid, says the member for Lingiari, that anyone would come into our electorates. The member for Berowra has just been telling us that he is invited to a function on Thursday night where the minister will be present but that if he is carrying out his duties he will not be able to. Even before you have introduced this measure, even before it has come into this House, you are already breaking the rules yourselves.

Friday is important to me in my electorate. Lots of things happen in my office on a Friday, with people who have not been able to get to me during that week or previous weekend wanting to see me. A week’s work may lead up to that Friday and I may have people wanting to see me. There would be functions to attend. I suppose 30 per cent of the evening functions I attend occur on a Friday night, and on most occasions under these rules I will not be able to get home. As I just put to the House, if I do not get home till Saturday morning is there much point in my going home at all? This measure will, at certain times of the year, confine me to Canberra and not allow me to carry out my duties.

The Prime Minister said that he was going to work the parliament five days per week. Except in the most extreme cases, under all governments of both political persuasions right back to Federation, we have not sat on Fridays. Why? I think that the founding fathers and the pre- and post-war executives of those governments recognised that people have to get back to their electorates and that they work in their electorates. That the Labor Party would try to create the impression that this is somehow making members of parliament work five days a week is, as one previous speaker said, a slur on every backbench member of parliament in this place and on those who have gone before them in previous parliaments. Were they all slackers who should have been lined up at the barrier for a five-day week? Is that what the government is saying? This is an ill-conceived thing that has been very poorly thought through.

I will not go over what we have heard to any great extent, but if you cannot have a quorum—if the quorum ceases to be important—how do you establish the House in the morning? How do you, for example, have a division? You cannot have a division. We all know that some members of parliament have very robust thoughts about matters they bring up as private members’ business. They are matters which do not normally get onto the Notice Paper but which you really want to test in the parliament so that your constituents are aware of an issue in your electorate. As the member for Berowra made very clear, the first thing is that the matter of privilege—until the Leader of the House is kind enough to let us see the legal opinion—is suspect.

Let me put a second scenario to you, Mr Speaker, because you have been the guardian of some of these things. What do we do when one of those robust debates is going on, the Speaker constantly calls a particular member to order, then either sends them out, names them or tells them to resume their seat and someone in the opposition wants to contest that by dissenting from the Speaker’s ruling? What do we do then? This could apply either way. It could be that a Deputy Speaker from the coalition makes a ruling that is quite offensive to the government and there will be no way of testing that ruling. So on every front this thing is flawed.

I have told you of the effects on my electorate and I have told you that there are probably alternatives. I do not mind coming here. The Prime Minister should not create the impression that I mind coming here to do work. I do not mind that one bit. I would be happy to sit for another week or another fortnight and do it in an orderly and proper fashion, as has been the custom for the last 107 years and, under our current practice, for the last 50-odd. Mr Speaker, this matter should be opposed.

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