Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I’m going to. There is also the paid parental leave small business pay clerk protection bill, as moved by the member for Dunkley, the shadow minister for small business; the national curriculum motion that was moved by me—that is three; the asylum seekers and Inverbrackie motion, as moved by the member for Mayo, and that is four; and the home insulation data motion, as moved by the member for Flinders. That is five. Those are the five motions and bills that we believed would be voted upon next Thursday, and today there were to be five voted upon—the three that the Leader of the House has listed in his motion and the two that I have added as an amendment. Our understanding is that there would be five votes today and five votes next Thursday. The Leader of the House and I have had numerous conversations about this matter since about half past six last night, when it became apparent that these motions were not on the draft Notice Paper, and we have a very different view about the Selection Committee’s determinations.

There are myriad reasons why these votes should be brought on today—not only because we believe that the Selection Committee made that decision, and even if there is some doubt about that there is no good reason not to vote on these two motions today. The debates have been concluded. The debates were held in the House and the Main Committee on Monday of this week or last week on all of the matters that should be listed for voting today. People’s positions are clear. The crossbenchers have indicated where they believe they will be placing their votes. The opposition and the government have indicated their views on the member for Wentworth’s NBN committee motion and the mental health motion. There is no good reason at all why these votes should not be brought upon today, and it was obviously the view of the crossbenchers that that would be the case because there are reports in the media this morning, as there were last night, about views of members of the crossbench on the mental health motion of the member for Dickson. So we on this side of the House believe that it would be in the interests of the House to clear these five matters away, whether they are successful or unsuccessful, and then move on to other items of business and deal with the other five next week.

We do not want to be in a position—and I particularly appeal to the crossbenchers in this regard—next week where the Leader of the House and the government have decided that we have run out of time to deal with matters that are time specific and that we will not be able to deal with them until we come back in February. For example, the national curriculum motion, which is currently going to be voted on next week because of another artificial reason, states that the national curriculum not begin until January 2012. If that is not passed in November, obviously that motion, which is time specific, will become moot. The same is the case for the consultation over the asylum seeker accommodation at Woodside and at Inverbrackie in the Adelaide Hills.

We do not want to be in a position where a recommendation, view or determination of the Selection Committee—which was made with an understanding that it would mean that some matters will be cleared away—is frustrated or delayed because the government gets to list what will be voted on in government business. That was not the intention of the agreement that was struck between the government, the opposition and the crossbenchers during that negotiation period. In that period it was expected that if the Selection Committee wanted matters voted upon they would be voted upon in a timely fashion. This meant that when it was time to move on to new matters after a debate had essentially concluded those matters should not hang around for days into the future.

I will not take up the House’s time with a longer explanation of the reason for this amendment; there is no point in doing so—

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