Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

Quite pertinent to this resolution are arguments that have been happening for some months when this parliament was regularly sitting and had run out of legislation. At the time, the opposition was making the point that the government was not properly managing its legislative program. We predicted that we would end up in these circumstances having had weeks where, regularly, there were was no business before the House at all and we actually spent some months debating the speech from the Governor-General here in the chamber because there was no legislation left. We predicted that poor management of the government program would lead to this.

We now have a circumstance where I cannot remember a week where we have had so many gag motions and there have been so many occasions where the government has shut down debate. Having done all of that, they still cannot manage the program within the ordinary hours that are available for this parliament. This is not something that is in the ordinary course of events. It is not normal for us have a circumstance where for many weeks there was basically no business before the House. Then we get to the final two weeks of these sittings and the government have consistently shut down debate. Yesterday only one backbencher from the government wanted to speak on the direct action policy that they claimed they were so proud of before they shut that one down. And now we have a circumstance where we are told within the ordinary hours of parliament they cannot fit the legislation in. The opposition does not support this resolution. The government have brought this on themselves through poor management of the parliament.

See this speech in context