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

I might use this opportunity to explain, first of all, that we support the resolution but also to explain how we've got here and to make some additional comments relating to how we got here that I didn't believe were appropriate to make on indulgence earlier but are, for that reason, relevant to the matter that's before us now.

We support the motion as moved by the Leader of the House, and, given that we have a video link facility, the resolutions are the appropriate resolutions for the House to conclude on. It is important to acknowledge how we got here, though, and why we are now in a situation where we have to have a video link. Members, including the Leader of the House, will remember that Labor was very resistant to having a video link and wanted to find a way to, as much as possible, get all members of parliament here, to the extent that that was going to be possible. For that reason, I had written, together with Senator Katy Gallagher, to both of the Presiding Officers asking for a working group to be established. The reason for that working group was to avoid where we have now landed.

That working group—and I thank the Presiding Officers—was functioning very well. Both managers of opposition business, both Presiding Officers, the Leader of the House and the Manager of Government Business in the Senate were involved. We were working very constructively. You can tell when something is working constructively, because the media keep ringing and saying, 'We can't get any leaks. What's going on?' and they don't get any. We were at the point where that group was ready to put a proposal to the chief medical officers which involved much stricter conditions than what we'll be living under this week but might have found a way for a number of people—in particular, from Victoria—to be able to physically get here. There are some representatives, for example, from border communities where there is currently no community spread, and it might have been possible under the restrictions for them to get here and therefore we wouldn't now be dealing with the video link resolution.

The Prime Minister then unilaterally went to the Acting Chief Medical Officer and got advice, when the Acting Chief Medical Officer didn't know what the proposal was going to be, and asked, 'Will it be safe?' The Acting Chief Medical Officer then did the best that he could with the information. He couldn't know what the proposal was going to be. It might have been iterated back and forth. It might not have been. We'll never know. It effectively created a situation where some members of parliament from Victoria—we have one in the chamber right now—were in a circumstance where they were able to deal with the new restrictions of the two-week lockdown before they got here. But, for many members of parliament from Victoria, that restriction simply made it practically impossible for them. At that moment, it became clear to Labor that we were going to have to support a video link, and it was at that moment that I wrote to the Leader of the House saying that that was the path that Labor would now support, acknowledging that that was a change from where we had previously been.

I want to thank the Speaker for the foresight. It was way back in March, after we'd put the 'break glass' sessional order and voted for that on both sides unanimously, that the Speaker, even though we were saying we weren't going to do a video link, decided to do the preparations anyway. There were meetings here on the floor of the parliament involving senior representatives from government offices and me, where we worked through, if it were to happen, what it would look like. We've now ended up in a circumstance where that's ready to go, and the important thing for those members who are unable to be here for various reasons is to know that, under this resolution, the official record of the Hansard will be recorded identically as if they had physically been within the room. The voices of their electorates being heard will not be disadvantaged in any way, and the Speaker has put the various precautions in place to make sure that it's used to facilitate as closely as possible what it would have been like if the people were here and not so that they can use the facility to basically become a roving mic throughout their electorates in different ways. Some of the formalities of this place are still locked in, which we support, notwithstanding the interesting television coverage we might otherwise have had. Effectively I don't think we could have done more to make it look and work like a parliament, given the circumstances that Australia is now in. To that end, I want to thank both the Presiding Officers—in particular, the Speaker, because we have an extent to which we don't acknowledge the other place—for the work that they have done and thank the Leader of the House for the motion that is before us.

Question agreed to.

See this speech in context