Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, congratulations on your appointment as Speaker. I won't speak for too long in the House this morning, but I do have a couple of concerns. Largely the government amendments proposed to the standing orders have merit; however, I echo the comments by the member for Clark that we only received these this morning, which is deeply disappointing.

I would like to go to the matter of urgent bills, and some of these comments have been made by honourable members before me. I'm concerned that a minister is able to come into this place, declare something urgent and then the whole situation changes and the capacity for all of us to speak is somewhat limited. Some of us will not have the opportunity. I think that a minister, if they intend for this to be an urgent bill, should have to prosecute that argument to us.

This is my third parliament; I'm very fortunate to be returned. I do remember the previous government coming in, gagging debate and then supposedly urgent bills languishing between here and the Senate. In many cases they were never even debated or voted on in the Senate. What that did was diminish the role of all of us here. All of us have a right to speak on every piece of legislation on behalf of our communities in this place.

I do appreciate what the government is trying to do here, but I would make a couple of points. Firstly, that the minister should prosecute why it is an urgent bill. The gagging of the EPBC Act in the previous parliament showed that it wasn't an urgent bill because the bill never went anywhere in the Senate. There were members who had put forward some very good amendments who didn't even have the opportunity to prosecute their cases with respect to those amendments.

The other point I would make is that if something is considered an urgent bill and is something that would naturally be passed by the government, having the majority of votes in here, then the government members as a whole should forgo their place on the speaking list to allow the time to be given to those on the crossbench and the opposition. If it is so urgent, then just one of you should be able to speak for all of you. Otherwise, we could have a case where the government then fills their speaking spot and we're taken up to 10 pm, largely with the government all repeating each other's words. I would argue that, in those two cases, that would be somewhat of a compromise with respect to this matter.

Moreover, I would like to say to the government, thank you for many of the amendments in here, particularly recognising the size and diversity of the crossbench—for us to have our questions. But I am particularly concerned with respect to how urgent bills are declared—that it could be open for abuse; essentially every bill could be urgent in the eyes of this government, and we don't want to see that in this parliament.

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