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

Some say too long, but the good burghers of the east and the north-eastern suburbs of Adelaide do not think so. The whole purpose of the joint select committee was to get around the Selection Committee process. Then, in the most extraordinary act, the government referred the Leader of the Opposition's wild rivers legislation to a second committee. Not content with having one committee on the wild rivers legislation they then referred the Leader of the Opposition's wild rivers bill to a second committee and yet they would not allow the Selection Committee to refer 19 pieces of legislation on the carbon tax—the most significant change to our economy in 111 years—to the House specialist committees.

The proper process of this House, as followed by the Howard government and the Hawke, Keating and Fraser governments before it, is that when legislation of such importance is introduced into the parliament it sits on the table for at least a week. Members of the House get the opportunity to consider it, to study it, to draft their speeches, to seek advice, to do research and to come into the House and give a considered speech. Then, when those speeches begin, if an inquiry is recommended, an inquiry is held and the legislation sits on the table again until the inquiry has met, considered all the evidence put before it and come up with recommendations. As a consequence the parliament gets the best measure of the skills available in this parliament to scrutinise legislation.

If I were the government, I would be welcoming the opportunity for someone to go over my work to make sure I do not make all the same mistakes that they have made time and time again in the last four years in their sloppy administration of government programs and legislation. I do not want to be not relevant to the debate, but let us not forget with Building the Education Revolution, home insulation or live cattle exports. How much better it would have been if the parliament had taken the time to get it right the first time rather than wasting taxpayers' money. And here we are again debating rushed legislation as if the government, this group of incompetents, could possibly get 19 pieces of legislation of over 1,000 pages right the first time. That is why this chamber needs to have maximum time to scrutinise legislation. It needs to have five specialist committees investigating these bills. The bills need to sit on the table until those inquiries are completed and then we should have the second reading debate. And then, if we need more time to sit, we should sit. But we should not be gagging this debate. We should not be truncating the selection committee process and we should not be needing extra sitting hours because the government suddenly realises they will need more time for this debate because they gagged the debate in mid-September.

I put that to the House. The opposition will not be opposing this motion from the Leader of the House, but the point needs to be made this is an incompetent government mismanaging another suite of legislation. The opposition looks forward to the day when the Australian people get the opportunity to clean this government out and start again with a group of people who know what they are doing.

Question agreed to.

See this speech in context