Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That all words from "the next sitting" be omitted and substituted with "16 October 2023."

For the benefit of the House, I just want to explain the purpose and the objective of the motion that I am moving. I do want to be clear to members of the House that Practice requires me to confine my remarks to the question that is now before the House, and that question is about when debate should be resumed.

I'm unable to and I will not be making reference to the substantive terms of the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Bill 2023 moved by the minister, because the motion that is before the House right now is concerned with the programming of debate. It is not in and on itself a motion which expresses an opinion of the House with respect to the bill. So, while—as is no surprise to anyone in this House—the opposition certainly does object to the bill, and there may be others who feel similarly, this is not the time for those arguments to be put or for a consideration of the substantive merits of the bill.

Instead, this amendment to the motion that's before the House is moved by me with the objective of upholding parliamentary accountability and protecting transparency against yet another attempt by the government to undermine this parliament. A legislative smash-and-grab raid is effectively what's being attempted here, and I'll return to that substantive point shortly.

Let me first speak to the procedural aspects of this motion and the amendment that I have moved to the motion. Again, I make clear that the question which is before the House—which, Deputy Speaker, you've just stated—should not be confused with the question that debate be adjourned, which is often put on the conclusion of the minister's speech. That's a question that cannot be amended or subject to debate. Instead, the question which is before the House right now is a question going to when the House wishes to resume debate on this bill. In the normal course of proceedings that would not typically be a controversial issue, because the House, in general, is not dissatisfied with programming decisions of the government. It is very clear from the standing orders, however, that it's open to any member to amend the motion which is before the House.

In this case, the motion before the House is that the resumption of the debate be made an order of the day for the next sitting. On this occasion, I have moved an amendment, which will be seconded by my good friend the member for Page, that all words from 'the next sitting' be omitted and substituted with '16 October 2023'. That amendment has been worded in specifically the language that is required under Practice and under the standing orders, because the requirement is that the amendment must substitute a specific date or day.

Let me turn now to the substantive question of why the opposition is moving this amendment. As Senator Cash has said in the other place and in public and as I have also said in the media, the opposition is deeply concerned that this minister is once again attempting to ram through this parliament radical changes to Australia's industrial relations system. Let's examine for a moment the government's legislative program and what is being proposed here. What the government wants to do is to commence debate on this bill tomorrow. This leaves the opposition and all of the crossbench members of this House less than 24 hours to properly consider this voluminous bill and formulate a response.

I make the point that nobody on this side of the House has seen, previous to about 15 minutes ago, this voluminous bill. It looks like a house brick. That's not entirely surprising. We've all been expecting that, and those expectations have been fully satisfied by the voluminous size of these hundreds of pages of legislation which are now before us on the table.

We've had the opportunity, it must be said, thanks to the generosity of the minister, to look at that house brick of a bill, but we've not been given the opportunity to consider it, to review it, to assess it, to examine it, to study it, as would normally be good practice in this parliament. Of course, the opposition has internal processes, and no doubt other parties and other organisations or groupings within this parliament have their own internal processes. It would not come as any surprise to the government to know that the opposition has a process to properly examine and consider a bill through shadow cabinet processes and through party room processes.

There has been a time-honoured and well-regarded convention in this place that there should be sufficient time allowed after a bill being introduced by the minister, as has just occurred now, for others in this parliament, including the opposition but also including crossbenchers, to have the opportunity to examine the legislation. Tragically, disappointingly, this time-honoured convention is being wantonly disregarded by this minister for what can only be assumed to be political reasons. I am advised that Senator Cash, the shadow minister, the opposition spokesperson on industrial relations matters, is only now as we speak receiving a briefing from the government on the contents of this bill. It's clearly a ludicrous and laughable proposition—

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