Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

The Leader of the House kindly informed us this morning of this initiative, and even then it was meant to be 1.30. What I note is that this is about political tactics, and we can see it because the Chief Government Whip has got a big smile on his face. The political tactic is that, before the Prime Minister gets back on Wednesday, the Acting Prime Minister wants her moment in the sun. So that the government’s political message of the day is not derailed, they will introduce their changes to the workplace relations system, come straight out of caucus before anyone who dissents in caucus has a chance to express a view to the media and come into this place and immediately introduce the bills, trying to give the impression that in fact the Labor Party are united in their stand on the repeal of Work Choices. That is quite clearly part of the political strategy of the government. The fact that the government do not stick to the script when it comes to the running of the parliament and are constantly changing the hours of parliament to suit their political purposes is well exemplified by the fact that tomorrow they want to change the hours of the parliament so that they can bring on the political issue of the day and the Acting Prime Minister can have her moment in the sun.

During the last few weeks and months we have seen that the Acting Prime Minister has suffered relevance deprivation syndrome and needs people to take notice of her. She has that little part of the Prime Minister’s DNA that says, ‘Look at me, I’m important,’ which the Prime Minister has used in relation to conversations with presidents. He has used it when acting as an interpreter between world leaders. He was even witness to those conversations between the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Russia, where the Prime Minister said, ‘Look at me, I’m important.’ Now we have the hours of the parliament changing so that we can all look at the Acting Prime Minister, because the Acting Prime Minister, suffering relevance deprivation syndrome, says, ‘Look at me, I’m changing the workplace relations laws and I’m going to change the hours of the parliament to accommodate this significant moment.’ It is so significant that they have to change the hours of the parliament. There is only a political motivation here—nothing more than a political motivation.

The government are concerned that they will not be able to get their political message up during question time; therefore, they have to have a speech before question time so that they can make the television news from five o’clock. It is interesting, isn’t it? The normal process is the bills would be introduced on a Thursday. That is the normal process of the House. Even if the government were to introduce bills outside of the normal requirements of the House, it is usually the case that bills would be introduced after question time, and even then it would be after the matter of public importance. So it normally occurs around 4 o’clock, 4.30 or quarter to five, but of course the difficulty for the government tomorrow is that they might not make the TV news if they have to introduce their changes to workplace relations at quarter to five tomorrow afternoon. The bill is not even being debated tomorrow, yet it is so urgent that they are changing the sitting hours of the parliament. It just smacks of policy on the run. It smacks of the fact that the government are desperately focused on politics rather than policy—desperately focused on running the politics of the issue rather than focusing on the details of the policy at issue.

We still wait with bated breath for the legislation and even consultation on the details of the legislation. We are all keen to see it, but the government of course have not provided that draft legislation to us. Therefore, they feel the need to change the sitting hours. I can divide on this, although I am not going to, but I do want to make a point. I am a fair-minded guy. I recognise that the government will ram this through no matter what. I think the parliament should get on with the job of doing what it should be doing—that is, governing in the best interests of the Australian people. Therefore, even though we oppose the fact that they are starting parliament early tomorrow simply for political purposes, we will let this through.

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