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

The Leader of the House has so lost control of his own side that he cannot even stop them leaking the schedule of parliamentary sittings. What will be next? I suppose the room service menu of the parliament will be leaked next, or the dining room menu will be leaked. This government is falling apart at the seams ; it is leaking from every single hole in the sieve that has become the Labor Party government. We have seen the terrible means by which they have tried to help travelling passengers over the last three days. We saw the Leader of the House struggling to answer questions today in question time, trying to pretend that he had not had any notice that Qantas could possibly ground their aircraft.

So, of course, we have a sitting pattern with only 63 sitting days. Firstly, the government does not have an agenda or a plan for the future. The Australian people are looking for a government made up of adults who know how to make decisions and are not captive to events , hostage to events, directionless, leadershipless and hopeless.

I do not commend the sitting pattern to the House. I can tell you that if there were an Abbott government we would be sitting a great deal more than 63 sitting days out of a possible 252, because we would have a plan and we would have an agenda. To start with, we would be rolling back the carbon tax. Secondly, we would be rolling back the mining tax. And, if the government is foolish enough to pursue mandatory precommitment, I predict that we will roll back the mandatory precommitment and replace it with our own policy to deal with the pokies.

With that, I will not hold up the House any longer. I do not commend the sitting pattern to the House but I will certainly not be calling a division and voting against it.

Mr ALBANESE (Grayndler—Leader of the House and Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) (19:54):  In conclusion, I make two points. The first point is that the parliament is getting younger—which is a good thing for both sides of the House—and members and senators are more likely to be young parents, whether they be fathers or mothers. And I make no apology for the fact that I have been consciously taking that into consideration over the last two years. School tends to go back after the Australia Day weekend, and I have been asked—indeed, by people on both sides of the House—to see if we could not sit when school returns. That is what I am doing with this proposal before the House. I think that is a good thing.

I note that this will not be opposed by the opposition. This is a sensible sitting schedule. I commend it to the House.

Question agreed to.

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