Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The Leader of the House says, 'What about the committee process?' I didn't know he was proposing that the bill be referred to a House of Representative committee. We're the ones voting on it today. We don't sit in the other house; we have no opportunity to send it to a Senate committee. All we have is the opportunity to vote yes or no on this legislation.

This is a government falling apart at the seams—I see the Treasurer has joined the energy minister at the crossbench; anything could happen with this government! I wouldn't put it past them. Anything is possible. We've got to Wednesday and they haven't lost one yet. That's an achievement for this government. It's better than last week, but anything could happen. As this government falls apart, it should not throw out the Westminster conventions and the traditions of good government in this House, which have stood this country well for more than a century. It should not throw those out.

They used to be the conservative party, which used to actually believe in parliamentary traditions and conventions. Guess what? Some parliamentary traditions and conventions are symbolic; they are simply for show—important symbolism, but nevertheless symbolism. This one is actually a convention of substance. It means the House should be able to consider legislation properly, carefully and in a methodical fashion. That's what this convention is about. That's why the standing orders say that the debate must be automatically adjourned—as the Leader of the House acknowledged earlier, after his little error of calling a division he didn't mean to call. As far as the Leader of the House's mistakes go today, that is one of the smaller ones. He's having a shocker of a day. He has lost control of the parliament, but the government should not lose control of the process.

It is nothing short of a disgrace to bring this legislation on like this, in this rushed fashion. What happened to stable government? What happened to the promise that if you voted for the Liberal and National parties you'd have proper, stable government with a Prime Minister for a term, and proper cabinet processes?

We don't know if these rushed changes, rewriting the legislation, have been to cabinet overnight. We would have no way of knowing. The Treasurer is simply flailing at the job as he goes about making up for his errors, forced by a delegation of backbenchers to rewrite the legislation on the run. The member for Curtin has called them out, pointing out that it was an affront to Liberal traditions, the principles of free enterprise and everything this once great party stood for, but I'll tell you what else it's an affront to: all those consumers battling high energy prices. This government, for a stunt, wants to make it worse for them. They want to chill investment and put upward pressure on power prices as they pathetically flail around and politically fail in their task.

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