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

If the bill is in the possession of the House, this process can't be used. On any other occasion, when a private member's bill reaches this House, a private member stands up and takes control of it. That's what ordinarily happens. What's on the blue there? There is a whole lot on the blue that gets referred to by members, some of which says, 'Debate will be adjourned.' Most of the time, the adjournment is done by an opposition member. That's what ordinarily happens. Similarly, when a private member's bill happens, the resolution that it be made an order of the day can be moved by a government member or an opposition member. There is no requirement that, because it appears on the blue, it somehow becomes the responsibility of the government to do it. The leader of the Greens party managed to follow procedure in previous terms and, as a result of following procedure, actually did the full second reading on a private member's bill that had come across from the Senate. He did a full private member's bill—I don't know if you're washing your hands or something. Are you trying to get hold of—in COVID days, we all had to do that as we walked in.

The Manager of Opposition Business was told by the Speaker what he had to move. But he was too smart! He knew better! He had four different occasions. The first time, I did move it for him, and he filibustered to stop it from coming to a vote. That's why the first one wasn't on the Notice Paper. For the second one, he never did anything. For the third one, he'd been told by the Speaker what to do, and he refused to. For the fourth, he refused again. That is the only reason this method is open to the Senate. Otherwise, the bills would be in the possession of the House.

But I'll tell you what is going on here. Have a think about what we just heard as to which organisations are publicly in favour of just getting these bits through and forgetting about the rest of the bill. They are all organisations that have members that are using the loopholes to undercut wages—every single one of them. Name one workers organisation that is actually arguing for this. Name one. There's no workers organisation calling for this, including the ones affected most by PTSD, like the Australian Federal Police Association. They are not calling for this action. So why do you think it might be that only those people who want to drive wages down, who are paid by their members to keep their wages bill low, are the ones who say, 'We'll just pull these parts out'?

I am very proud to say that no member of the Labor Party, no government MP in this place or the other place, has moved for a single part of this bill to be delayed—not one! But for those opposite right now to be going through the charade of this, where they say, 'If they get to deal with it, their plan is to pretend that the numbers in this chamber are a third, a third, a third'—that's what we're told the numbers will be on the resolution if this motion to deal with it immediately is successful. That's what the Manager of Opposition Business says he will move. He's not even trying to take it seriously.

I've got to say: we've had quotes from Practice but they always stop at the critical thing. Practice also says it seems unlikely that a formal conference would be used to resolve disagreements between the houses in contemporary political circumstances. Practice makes clear that this process is not a way of resolving differences between the houses. This is not a practical way of dealing with differences between the houses. But this game is a game those opposite played for nine years and want to continue to play now—a game of, 'Let's do everything we can to delay fixing underpayments for Australia's workers.' They might have continued to get away with that in a House of Representatives where we had a government where low-wage growth was a deliberate design feature of their economic management, but that's not the case anymore.

Let's make clear that the delay they originally sought on when we would debate this bill and get through it in the House of Representatives was for a date that has already passed. The government has already given more time for this bill than those opposite sought when it was first introduced, when we had those votes to say how long it could be delayed. We have allowed the full length of time plus more before this bill comes to the stages of amendments. But the time we have set aside for amendments has been wasted by the charade and the procedural game of the Manager of Opposition Business—a procedural game which is only available to him because he has demonstrated a level of laziness and sheer incompetence that knocks all his predecessors from each side of politics out of the park. No-one comes close. No-one before has ever failed the simple test of: 'Can you say the words out loud to put a bill on the Notice Paper?' Even when told by the Speaker, 'These are the words you need to say out loud; you need to read them out one at a time and say them into a microphone', this Manager of Opposition Business can't handle that. Please! I don't know who decided that he got the job but can you at least give me someone I can argue with. Can you at least give me somebody who knows there's a big book called Practice, there's a little book called Standing orders and there are procedures that the parliament is meant to follow, and then we can have a debate on the issues. This incompetence is like nothing we've ever seen.

It never occurred to me for a minute when I came in here, when we were receiving those messages from the Senate on the private member's bills, that none of them would end up on the Notice Paper. It never occurred to me that the Manager of Opposition Business would think it was clever to filibuster his own amendment and prevent it from coming to a vote. It never occurred to me that someone could either be that ignorant, that lazy or that plain stupid to have an opportunity come across from the Senate and say, 'Yeah, I'm just going to not let it happen, and then I'll complain about it; that'll be my strategy.' The strategy that this parliament should have is to get wages moving. The strategy this parliament should have is to end underpayments, to criminalise wage theft, to give minimum standards to gig workers, to give rights to casual workers and to make sure that the labour hire loophole is closed so that people with the same experience and same expertise working side-by-side aren't on different rates of pay because of a labour hire rort and a labour hire loophole. With that in mind, once we've dealt with this we can deal with the bill at hand. I move:

That the question be now put.

A division having been called and the bells being rung—

Fucking disgraceful!

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