Alby Schultz (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I compliment you, Mr Speaker, on being elevated to the esteemed position of Speaker of the House. I am wondering if we are attempting to change Australia to a version of George Orwell’s Oceania where newspeak is now called ‘Labor speak’. The government proposes to change the parliamentary order of business under the guise of ‘greater accountability and scrutiny’. This sounds like doubleplusgood. In fact, the results of these proposed amendments would be doubleplusungood—that is, Mr Speaker, if we are now unable to use words like ‘evil’ or ‘bad’.

The central principle of newspeak was that it made it impossible to contemplate rebellion against the state, or even scrutiny of it—and that is precisely what this proposal tries to do. Look at how the newspeak or ‘Labor speak’ unfolds. The first promise is more sitting days, but the number of sitting weeks has been cut. Secondly, by sitting on Fridays, travel back to the electorate to serve constituents over the weekend will be well nigh impossible for rural and regional MPs because of the amount of travelling time involved. Of course, ‘purely coincidentally’, there are more rural and regional seats held by coalition MPs than Labor!

Next is the contention that Friday sittings will ‘provide an opportunity to harness the creativity and intellect and ideas of the members’. The only problem is that it seems only a few will be here to do any harnessing. In the words of the Labor member for Leichhardt just yesterday:

From what I can gather, there won’t be any question time on Friday, so we will be able to shoot through ...

This leads me to proposal 2: no question time on Fridays. If these new provisions are for ‘greater accountability and scrutiny’, why will there be a day every sitting week without a question time? Question time ensures that ministers of the government are held to account for their actions. The proposal is to actually have fewer question times this term than under the previous government—supposedly more scrutiny yet fewer question times. Could this be more Labor speak—doubleplusunquestiontime? If we are to scrutinise the government, they need to be here in the House and we need to vote on issues as they are debated.

Proposal 3 is that there be no quorums or divisions on Fridays. The ability to call a quorum ensures that a minimum number of government MPs are in the House. But in this new version of Orwell’s Oceania the opposition and, more importantly, the public will not be able to tell because you cannot call a quorum on Fridays. So the opposition will be in the House, working diligently on holding the possibly absent government to account. Does anyone really think that this will work? Assuming that there are indeed enough people left in the House on Fridays, no decisions can be taken until another time because there will be no divisions on Fridays. At a division in the House, all members available must attend and the government, to pursue its agenda, must at all times hold the majority. So here we have it. Not only is the government virtually guaranteeing that nobody from their side will be there because they do not have to hold a majority, because there will be no divisions, but also the opposition will not be able to check whether even the minimum number of members are in the House because there will be no quorums.

If this is the true worth of ‘greater scrutiny’ and ‘harnessing creativity’ then the government members are acting like a bunch of prefects working out how to change the rules so they can wag school legitimately and fool everyone else by pretending that they are hard at work. I think we could rename Nineteen Eighty-Four as 2008, with due apologies to Mr Orwell.

Proposal 4 is to move private members’ business from Monday to Friday and consequently have no quorums or divisions during this period. Once again, this is an opportunity for opposition members to speak to no-one and get no decisions—double-plusnoth-ing. Proposal 5 is to not have any matters of public importance debated on a Friday. This further demonstrates the Orwellian nature of the new government. So on Fridays we cannot debate matters of public importance, we cannot vote on issues, we cannot hold the government to account through questions and we cannot check whether anybody from the other side is even in the House. This reads like the announcement ‘Elvis has left the building’. How do you scrutinise without asking questions? How do you scrutinise without votes? How do you scrutinise a government that just is not there?

Proposal 6 is to increase sitting hours so that MPs can represent their constituency better. The increased hours are for government business—not opportunities for members to represent their constituents and certainly not for the opposition to hold the government accountable for its actions. I hope the public remembers the cynical way in which this government is already treating their rights. I hope it is the beginning of the end of this government and its doubleplus Labor speak. In the meantime, I will continue to write to my constituents, like I have tonight, telling them that I have to cancel the commitment I gave to attend the function because Mr Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister of this country, has decided that my constituency is not worth servicing on a Friday.

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