Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

I presume this is a point of order that you're seeking a ruling on, so this is just a contribution. There are four different messages being received from the Senate. The presiding officer has an obligation to report those messages to us. What we do with those messages is a matter for the House. On the first of those messages: I moved that it be made an order of the day. I understand why an amendment was moved to consider it immediately; the thing that I don't understand is why there was then a filibuster so that we got to 1.30 without any of the questions being resolved. As a result, that motion will appear in future on the Notice Paper under government business.

On the second one—there are four—the antidiscrimination one: I understand that it has been reported to the House and no-one moved anything. That's a right of the House, if no-one wants to move anything. So then we get to the third message, which I think is where we're up to now. Particularly when government legislation comes in, there's very much an obligation on the Leader of the House to take the lead on how government legislation is dealt with. Ministers don't have that obligation for business that arises is private member's business. It's completely up to the Manager of Opposition Business—as I've done previously, years ago in the past—or for crossbenchers, or whoever wants to jump, to jump up. But there's certainly no obligation on anyone in the House to deal with a message. It's up to members.

So the first one has gone as a result of the filibuster, and that will be on the Notice Paper. The second one the House chose not to deal with, and we're now up to the third message. If a member chooses to deal with that, they can, but it's certainly not incumbent on us to do that.

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