Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business (House)) Share this | Hansard source

The concept of an interjection is meant to be that it helps.

To the crossbench, because this will come to a vote: we have an attempt by the government to render the crossbench as irrelevant as possible. We have a calculated attempt by the government to try to make sure that they eliminate the risk of a majority forming against them. They know already that it's not going to be a problem for confidence and supply—enough people have given them that guarantee. What the parliament will be able to do, though, is debate issues. What the parliament will be able to do is debate legislation. What the parliament will be able to do is deal with amendments on a series of issues that this government simply want to run and hide from. Take, for example, what they have done with live animal exports. It is legislation that, the moment they thought they might not win on the floor of the parliament, even though we'd been told the penalties legislation was urgent, all of a sudden, when there was a risk of it being amended on the floor, it disappeared, never to be seen again, just existing on the Notice Paper and nowhere else at all. That won't be the only issue where this government are wanting to run and hide. What's in front of us now will be an amendment that will very simply allow next year, because the budget is early, for us sit one week fewer than we ordinarily do. But for anyone to claim that in the period from the beginning of the year to 2 April we can only turn up for a fortnight—

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