Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

The motion by the Leader of the House, as all of the speakers on our side have said, was conceived as a stunt and has unravelled as he has prepared the substance of it. As the member for Flinders outlined earlier, from the moment this government won election, it was obvious that it was rushing through the processes without looking at the substance. Within days of the election—in fact, in the week before the election and the week after—the new government was saying the parliament was going to resume before Christmas. That never eventuated. That quietly drifted away. It was an excited announcement made in the wake of an election, without any obvious thought of the practical fact that it takes days and in many cases weeks before many of the seats—and members who are here today—are actually confirmed. The notion that an election on 24 November would allow parliament to sit before Christmas was always ridiculous.

But it was in this vein that the Leader of the House and the Chief Government Whip conceived Friday sittings. In the cheap spin that has been the backbone of so much of the policy announcement of those opposite, it was thought this would be quite a popular move. As the Deputy Leader of the Opposition said, it was to convey the impression that all of a sudden parliament would sit for five days for the first time and parliament would do more work. If parliament is to sit on Fridays—and all of our speakers have said we are happy to sit on Fridays—we do not want a clayton’s sitting day; there has to be a real sitting day with all the mechanisms of parliamentary accountability. The four on the government side who have spoken to this motion have for years defended question time. On the rare occasion that the previous government had a special sitting day to deal with an important issue and there was not a question time, this House heard from the then opposition about what a travesty of justice it was. What they are proposing is to have a sitting day every Friday without question time. That speaks volumes about their approach.

Of course, it will also be a sitting day where a good deal of the parliament is not here—and by that I mean the minister sitting opposite, the minister sitting at the table; I mean the 25 or 30 ministers and parliamentary secretaries sitting opposite on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. But they will not be here on Friday; they will be out of Canberra on Thursday night. So when the government said parliament would sit on Friday it meant parliament with no government ministers would sit on Friday, because there would be no question time and it would be private members’ business only.

The history of the Labor Party on question time is not good. Currently—and we are yet to have one in this parliament, but as of the last series of question times—there are four times more questions being asked than occurred the last time Labor was in government. As the previous speaker outlined, former Prime Minister Keating introduced a roster; but prior to that the number of questions being asked had reduced to 10 in total per day. And now we have 20 per day. Whether that remains we will see. But for the Leader of the House to say that question time cannot be held on a Friday, that question time is not important, is breathtaking hypocrisy. The now Treasurer, the member for Lilley, has a list of quotes on the parliamentary Hansard. From March 2003: ‘Question time is ... parliament’s most powerful weapon’. Again from March 2003:

... why would you compromise the most fundamental cornerstone of parliamentary democracy, the most powerful weapon in the arsenal of accountability, by cancelling question time I do not know. You would only do it if you had something to hide.

That is the current Treasurer and member for Lilley when he was in opposition.

Question time can easily be held on a Friday. Arguments about parliament rising at two or 2.30 do not obviate the fact that question time could be held at 10 or 11 in the morning, which occurred in this parliament many years ago and has occurred, and probably still does occur, in some of our state jurisdictions. But what we are seeing here is a stunt unravelling. It is in the vein of every single parliamentary procedure, that procedure that has occurred, and the Leader of the House has mucked this up. He knows he has. In the first day of the new government, cancelling question time will speak volumes. Those of us on this side of the House will ensure that we do everything we can to get a question time on a Friday. The government’s first step, in removing a question time on Friday, speaks volumes. (Quorum formed)

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