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

I rise in support of the motion that has been moved by the Special Minister of State, but, in doing so, I need to acknowledge and to explain to anyone who might be listening and paying attention that they are paying far more attention than the government has been paying during the course of today. There is a reason that these mistakes happen, and today has been littered with them. The reason these mistakes are happening is really simple. This government has decided to be the first government where ministers do not take responsibility for their own legislation, so whoever is rostered on is in charge of whatever is in front of us. There have been a few outcomes from that today. We've had this one, where a motion was moved. The wording of what was moved—it hadn't been negotiated back and forth with the opposition, so we let it through in good faith—actually said that the House would adjourn after we got to the third reading stage of a bill that we weren't going to deal with. That meant that, earlier today, this House resolved that it was going to meet forever. That was what was decided. You had a motion, you had a vote—

I'll admit I like it when parliament sits, but even that is too much for me. So the House resolved—and this is why leave had to be granted for a fresh suspension to be moved—that it was going to meet forever. We try to be cooperative on occasions like this, but the bizarreness of that happening was because there is no planning and order to the program and ministers don't take responsibility for their own legislation. So in one day we had the Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts put out a media release after a bill was amended in the Senate, saying he didn't like the amended bill. It was either going to pass in full or not at all. Three hours later another minister, the Leader of the House, was in here adopting all the amendments that Labor had carried in the Senate. So effectively the minister's position became: 'It's either going to get through in full, not at all or exactly as Labor requested.'

Then we had another bill where the member for Moncrieff spoke on a completely different piece of legislation and then we ended up with a suspension of standing orders being moved to have the parliament sit forever. When the program came down earlier this week and I said that this was the moment when the government gave up, I meant it figuratively. I did not expect that they would, in fact, give up.

Keep going forever. Interestingly, though, the way they were going to keep going forever was in keeping with this government, because they were going to keep the parliament sitting forever with nothing before it, with nothing to do, with no actual purpose.

We'll support the suspension of standing orders but remind the government that this place is not a bubble. This place matters. Paying attention matters. Having ministers responsible for their own legislation matters. That's why the relevant shadow ministers come in here and take the business of government far more seriously than the government itself takes it.

Question agreed to.

House adjourned at 20:14

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