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

I thank the Leader of the House. The opposition will be supporting the suspension in its form without amendment. There are a number of issues that we have been pursuing publicly on which we don't have the agreement of the government. It remains our position that the parliament should be meeting with a different calendar to where we now are, where we are pretending that we won't be required until August. Obviously, we're not going to go through the process of moving an amendment to that or anything like that now, but our position is known—it is stated—and that remains the case.

I should also point out that while the parliament should be meeting, it is also the case that, in the absence of the parliament, and even if the parliament were meeting, oversight during this period is really important. There will be a Senate inquiry with a committee established to be able to perform a whole lot of that oversight. This parliament has seen for a long time that, while there are joint committees and Reps committees, the truth is the committee system that has been the most thorough in supervising the work of government has been Senate select committees; that is simply a given. A reason for that, in part, is that the chairs are not from the government and that does make a difference in the role that they play.

That's the reason why we have sought for there to be a Senate select committee, rather than there being a House of Representatives committee or a joint committee. I put that down because I appreciate that some members of the crossbench have raised both with me personally and with the Leader of the House—that they wanted a House of Representatives inquiry or a joint committee to be the way forward. Our view has been that history has shown that a Senate select committee is the strongest way to provide oversight, in the absence of the House and Senate sitting themselves. That's the reason why we've pursued that particular approach. For the reasons I stated at the beginning, we won't be supporting amendments to the motion that's been moved and negotiated cooperatively with the Leader of the House.

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