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

It's not the most effective afternoon in the House, but here we are. To go through it once again, I'll deal with the procedural issues quickly and then I want to say a bit more about the substance.

On the procedural issues: if the opposition wanted to deal with these issues quickly, why did you filibuster this morning? Why? If you actually wanted to deal with these quickly, why did you spend an hour and a half making speeches about when we would debate it? Why? I didn't get to declare the government's position on the amendment, because to declare the government's position—because I was the mover of the motion—would have wound up the debate. I did try to stand up earlier in the debate, and opposition members were still wanting to speak, so I went and sat down, and then they kept going for an hour and a half, and, as a result, that question never got resolved. If you were serious about wanting to deal with this quickly, would you have designed to filibuster and waste as much time as possible, with people giggling about how clever this was?

The opposition have treated this like a game all day. That's what they've done. They haven't done their homework—they haven't bothered—with something happening for the first time this term, on a private members' bill coming through like this.

I can tell you: if there had been a Greens party bill that had made it through, I can guarantee the Greens party would have been onto the right procedures when it reached the House, if a private member's bill that had been moved by one of their senators had made it through. I know they would have, because I've seen them do it.

In opposition, we had occasions where we were in the same situation, and, as I said, Christopher Pyne and I would be jumping to try to see who'd get carriage of it. That's because you want it to be something that you can make sure you give a second reading speech to. You want to be able to do the advocacy.

But if there was any sincerity in wanting to deal with these issues quickly, why was there a filibuster this morning? A whole lot of people in the chamber right now were roped into being part of it. I don't know whose decision it was, but it all happened without there being any response by the government, because I didn't want to be in a situation of closing off debate. Was it a game where people thought it would be funny—'Let's see if we can get him to move that the question be put'? Is that what it was? Was this entire thing just a game, as far as the opposition is concerned? This is an issue that they have never cared about. As to this one in particular that's in front of us right now, this hangs off another provision, because this is about discrimination not occurring, and we don't have any examples of this having occurred yet, but it's about making sure that no-one is discriminated against, in relation to family and domestic violence leave being there.

Now, paid family and domestic violence leave is only law. The call for it had been around for more than a decade, and we'd started, when we were last in office; we hadn't got there. The call had got really loud during the nine years intervening. Those opposite never moved on it. And now we're meant to believe that suddenly they think these provisions are urgent? It's a tiny area of discrimination that hangs off provisions that they held back their entire time in office. Is that what we're meant to believe?

You see, we had a line from the Manager of Opposition Business—and I wrote it down, so it mightn't be quite verbatim, but I think it's pretty close. He said: 'We've seen repeated attempts by the government to prevent these bills from being debated.' The prevention of the bills being debated has been all of his own making, because, if he'd done what the leader of the Greens party had previously done, or if he'd done what I'd tried to do when Christopher Pyne was here, then he would have made sure that the debate could at least occur in the House. But he did none of that. The opposition played, this morning, what can only be described as a game. Then, when given direct instruction from the Speaker about how to make sure that it ended up with debate, they refused to do it and just went to suspensions. That's what they've done. But I think the best evidence—and I don't know who's going to tell Senator Cash what's happened today—

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