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

on indulgence—I want to, first of all, thank both the Leader of the House and the acting Leader of the House in reaching the agreement to make sure that people who are not able to be here—because of quarantining they would have to do beforehand or quarantining that they would have to do afterwards—are still able to participate in the parliament. I would note for members that, because of the number of people on the Speaker's panel who are not here, there has been an agreement that the Federation Chamber won't operate during the current sittings. That's unfortunate, but we need people to be able to chair it, and a large number of people on the Speaker's panel have been affected by that.

I also would like simply to acknowledge, Mr Speaker, both your role and the role of the President of the Senate in making sure that the parliament is able to sit by adopting rules that are, indeed, more stringent than would apply anywhere else in the ACT but, given the nature of this place, provide safety for the whole country by doing it the way you have. There's important legislation to get through and important scrutiny to occur, and those rules and this agreement have enabled us to do that.

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