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

I do admire that the Leader of the House will claim that they have a working majority, when the problem is they have a majority who will not work. I admire the gall of the Leader of the House in claiming that rushing this one forward today has nothing to do with the fact that it is about trying to make up the numbers after the event when a government has lost a vote on the floor of the parliament. I admire the fact that the Leader of the House is willing to come in here and argue black is white in such a good mood. In fact, I admire that he is able to smile at all when there has never been a Leader of the House more humiliated in the last 50 years than happened to that man the last Thursday that this parliament sat.

I commend the opposition's amendment to the House. The amendment also deals with issues relating to the Selection Committee, and the member for Grayndler will go through those. The reason the government originally gave for not allowing the Selection Committee to have the same formation it had from 2010 to 2013 was on the basis that they had a working majority. Well, they do not. If you have a working majority it means that, when the votes happen, you persistently have a majority. That has not been the experience of this parliament. That has not been the experience under the leadership of the Leader of the House that we currently have.

The amendment that I have put forward deals with making sure both sides have to agree if we are going to conduct a division a second time round. It also deals with the fact that the Selection Committee should take the same form as the parliament had from 2010 to 2013. If it were ever going to be argued that that should not happen because the government had a working majority, that argument absolutely collapsed the last time the parliament sat on that Thursday afternoon. Those opposite remember the date. Those opposite remember their moment in history. Those opposite remember their humiliation. But the answer is not to change the rules; the answer is to turn up for a vote. The answer is to turn up to work. You do not try to change the rules to manufacture a victory when you have not had one. What you do is you get your members of parliament to bother to turn up to work. The government has not been able to deliver that.

Today is simply a shallow attempt to try to change the rules so that, if it goes wrong again for them, he can come through with his feather duster and try to clean up everything after the event. The Australian people see these changes for exactly what they are: a government in chaos with a Leader of the House and a Prime Minister who do not have a working majority in the House of Representatives or their cabinet or their party room.

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