Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think she wanted to be a minister, didn’t she? I think it is very interesting to note that the so-called pep talk to the new ministers and new members of parliament on the government side to try to avoid hubris and arrogance obviously did not work. I have been watching this debate quite closely, both in the chamber and on the closed-circuit TV in our rooms, and it has been very obvious that the ministers have not gotten over their hubris and the members have not taken this very seriously. They think, ‘We’re in government now, so we are just going to treat you like the rubbish that we think the opposition is.’

Unfortunately, I do not think that wears well in the electorate and that has obviously been shown by the response that it has brought about. I listened to the four members of the government who had a view on this and spoke to the motion. It is quite interesting that only four did; they thought it was a fait accompli. They raised the idea that we will still have four question times a week and we will still have three MPIs a week, just as we did in the last parliament. But if we are actually sitting two fewer weeks than we did in the last parliament, in a normal year—not an election year—that is obviously eight fewer question times and six fewer MPIs. When I and many of us here first came in, we were sitting for 20 weeks and we have sat for up to 23 weeks in a period. If we are sitting fewer weeks, then obviously we will have fewer question times and fewer MPIs, and therefore we will have less accountability to the parliament.

This proposal has been trumpeted by the Prime Minister as making politicians work harder by scheduling an extra 15 sitting days. Every member in this House knows that quite often they actually work harder in their electorate than they do here. I actually find being in Canberra a lot easier than being the member for Barker out in the electorate because my electorate is 64,000 square kilometres. I drive about 80,000 kilometres a year. I will obviously be driving less because I will not have those extra Fridays; I will be in the parliament. In fact, the earliest I can get back to my electorate—that is, to the start of my electorate—on present flights is nine o’clock on a Friday night. There is not a lot that you can do at nine o’clock on a Friday night. There would be many members of parliament who are a lot worse off than I am. In fact, if I were still living where I was until very recently, I would not be able to get home before midnight. There are many members of parliament who will not be able to get back until Saturday because of the flights that we have scheduled here in Australia.

So what is going to happen? Obviously we are going to have a whole lot of people staying here in Canberra. It might be great for the Canberra economy, but it is not going to be great for the constituencies that we were elected to represent and to meet, unless people take the attitude that, as the new member for Leichhardt has said, we will just buzz off, which means we will not actually take the Friday very seriously at all. I can assure you that I take parliament seriously, but obviously this government does not. It is a great shame that this parliament and this new government have taken this attitude. It has been a bit too smart by half. I know we are very limited tonight—for sensible reasons of wanting to get a reasonable night’s sleep—but I just hope that the new government gets over this silly idea. Anyone with any common sense will say to you that this is not going to be in the interests of the constituents. It is not going to be in the interests of members of parliament because now we cannot vote on private members’ business. What you are effectively saying to us is that, as members, we will not be able to vote on private members’ business; we cannot have divisions; we cannot have quorums. Frankly, I think we all know that the legal advice that you have on this is pretty dodgy, because section 39 of the Constitution clearly says that we have to have a quorum in parliament. How can you decide whether there is a quorum if you cannot call one? This parliament, a bit like Gough Whitlam, is trying to override the Constitution as they tried to do in 1975. There is a very strong whiff of that sort of silly ignorance and arrogance over the Australian Constitution, which we all hold quite dear.

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