Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have community cabinets. We, for the first time, are not only having question time in this chamber; the Rudd government, its entire cabinet, are going, as we did to Perth, to communities, allowing, for example, 16 questions directly from the public, as part of our commitment to opening up access to government, to harnessing the ideas of the brilliant men and women who make up this great nation—something that those opposite reject.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have to say, from the behaviour of those opposite, that they actually just do not get it. This is a debate about standing orders and about lifting standards in the parliament, and what we have from the opposition is behaviour that is in breach of the standing orders, as they breached the standing orders day after day in the previous parliament. The previous Leader of the House never once got up and referred to a standing order or to the House of Representatives Practiceit was just about who had the numbers.

Let’s not have any nonsense about there being no consultation about these issues. The fact is that the government announced this initiative way back in December. There was no opposition from those opposite in December and no opposition from those opposite in January. It took them until this week, because we have an opposition bereft of ideas with nothing to say about the real issues confronting the nation—nothing to say about the education revolution, nothing to say about infrastructure, nothing to say about the debacles in defence and nothing to say about climate change and the water crisis.

The big issue on which they are going to take a stance on this first day of the new parliament is standing orders. What they have done is get a speaking list and tell every member who is not a new member that they have to be on the speaking list. So there are 40-odd members of parliament down to speak on this resolution tonight—hour after hour of speeches. What the opposition want, of course, is for us to gag the resolution before the House. I have indicated to the Leader of the Opposition and the Manager of Opposition Business that we will not be doing that. If they think that this is worthy of hour after hour of debate then that is fine. Let the Australian public know that that is their vision for the nation, their idea of the No. 1 priority facing this parliament. The fact is that they have nothing positive to say about the real issues facing the nation.

I was surprised that there was opposition to this proposal, because private members’ business is seen historically as being to the great advantage of the opposition. It is actually a time when you can have motions moved in the parliament. It is a time when you can have, during the grievance debate, ideas raised. Some ideas from your backbench might actually be good; they might actually feed into the debate that is going on within the coalition about what you stand for. That might not be a bad thing, to actually encourage a bit of debate, because it is quite clear that you cannot have it both ways. You cannot, on the one hand, say that the Labor Party has opened up debate for the opposition to take advantage of it, as was written in the Laura Tingle article in the Australian Financial Review two weeks ago, and yet come in here and say that this situation, in which we have in effect exactly the same rules as applied for private members’ business on Monday and exactly the same rules as applied in the Main Committee, is an atrocity.

The fact is that you have to look at what the opposition did when they were in government to see how fair dinkum they are. Let us look at their credibility when it comes to Matters of Public Importance. The previous government unilaterally cancelled eight MPIs in the last parliament alone. Over the 12 years of the Howard government there were 56 days when MPIs were proposed by the opposition but cancelled by the government. Indeed, on the last day of parliament, the dying hours of the Howard government, the government threw out the MPI entitled ‘The need for fresh thinking and new leadership to secure Australia’s future prosperity’. The opposition, the then government, might have thrown out our MPI, but the people of Australia threw them out because they understood that there was a need for fresh thinking and new leadership. The Australian people had other ideas.

Even the Main Committee was not immune from the Howard government’s contempt for parliament. There were at least six days in the last parliament when the Main Committee did not even sit. Why did they not sit when they were scheduled to? Because they had nothing to do.

Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They’d run out of puff.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This was a government that was stale, out of puff, out of ideas, out of touch, and it is now out of office. And we can see why. It is quite clear that the former Howard government was ready to depart, and the people of Australia saw to that on 24 November.

There is some considerable irony in the fact that it is the Manager of Opposition Business who is talking about accountability of the parliament and talking about the conditions upon which he is prepared to work on Friday. Just think about that. The Manager of Opposition Business does not want to work five days a week. That is really what is going on here. But when he was the minister, he was responsible for imposing on working families AWAs which allowed a seven-day working week for many working people, scrapping unfair dismissal laws, slashing sick leave, cutting penalty rates on weekends and public holidays, and putting unfair and extreme AWAs onto vulnerable employees. We have the opposition saying, ‘We think it is okay for young, vulnerable working Australians to be presented with these contracts and to have to sign up, giving away their provisions,’ and yet also saying, ‘We have to have conditions upon which we are prepared to work five days a week.’

The Leader of the National Party let the cat out of the bag last week. The coalition gathered for a two-day party room meeting. It is pretty clear that nothing positive or constructive came out of it. Afterwards they gathered at Menzies House for a little celebration of how well they had gone in the last year—

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, I raise a point of order.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Under which standing order?

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Under relevance. The member speaking is required to speak to the amendments to the standing orders. He is straying dramatically from that subject; I think that is quite clear. He is now talking about the Liberal Party conference last week. I ask you to draw him back to the subject of the amendments. He has run out of material—

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have heard your argument. The minister is being relevant.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is about whether the opposition is prepared to support the government in having a five-day working week for parliamentarians. That is what this motion is about. The fact is that the Leader of the National Party told a gathering of his colleagues last week to ‘consider the next three years as a holiday before we return to our rightful place on the government benches’. That is the other thing that is going on here. Look at the propositions which have been put forward. The opposition does not comprehend that it actually lost the election, that this side of the House has a mandate and that part of our mandate is increasing our accountability to the parliament. The list of speakers that is circulating still has all its members on the government side. No; you are now on the right side of the House. I got a letter today about a constituent from someone signed ‘Minister’ from that side of the House—the Minister for Small Business and Tourism. It has not yet come to terms with the fact that it has changed.

On this side of the House, we are determined to increase accountability. For example, when it came to AWAs, the person who was minister for Work Choices refused to table the details of AWAs. The fact is that the distinction is pretty clear here. This parliament will sit for 82 days. Previously, the Howard government sat for 67 days. We will have 67 question times. The Howard government had on average 63 question times, including 50 in 2007. Of MPIs cancelled by the previous government, there were eight in the last parliament and 56 over its 12-year life.

The fact is that these provisions will allow for greater sitting of the parliament. We have moved private members’ business to Friday, raising the status of private members’ business, allowing for more than an hour of extra time during that period, and we have added three hours 25 minutes of government business. Unlike this mob opposite, we have a huge agenda for the nation. We have a mandate to implement that agenda and we will be pursuing it throughout 2008. This is a sensible proposition which should be supported by the opposition. If you want to keep sitting all night, you can. It just shows what your priorities are. It just shows that you do not have anything positive to say about the future of the nation. I commend the changed standing orders to the House.

Brendan Nelson (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The first thing that I think we need to do here is specifically have a look at what is being proposed. It is common when new governments are formed or there has been a change of government for there to be some changes in standing orders. It is equally common for the opposition of the day to take exception, for various reasons, to the changes to those standing orders. I think it reflects the depth of concern that we on this side have in relation to this: we are here at just after 8 pm on the first sitting day of this the 42nd Parliament preparing for a debate that is likely to go into the early hours of the morning about something that we feel very deeply about. This is no trivial change. These are precedent-making changes, including changes to the standing orders, which will for the very first time reduce the accountability of the government, through the parliament, to the people of Australia.

We are also considering this on the eve of a very large event which we understand will occur tomorrow and which is the centre of national attention. We are debating this on the evening of the first sitting day of the parliament, where there has understandably and quite rightly been a focus on other things. I have had a senior member of the government say to me today, ‘Can you try and keep it short, because don’t forget we’ve all got our families here.’ In one sense, we would like to keep it short, but we would not be doing the right thing by those families or the rest of the country if we were not to take up this debate.

Let us just have a look at what is being proposed here—and we were informed about this through the media, which increasingly appears to be the way in which this government will work, with a significant army of people massaging that media message. We were told through the media in December—just before Christmas when understandably people were focused on other things—of an order of business that would include five sitting days, four question times and three matters of public importance. To the average person listening to Neil Mitchell on 3AW—the Leader of the House may not have a high regard for Mr Mitchell and his listeners but we do—I say we will be very happy to put questions on behalf of members of the Australian community to the Prime Minister and other ministers as we go through the course of this parliament. That is what this debate is all about. This is the Australian community’s parliament. We were told at Christmas we would go to five sitting days. The message that was delivered to the average Australian, who may not pay a lot of attention to what happens in the parliament, was: the parliament sits for four days and your MPs are going to sit for five days. In other words, the Australian public was being led to believe by the incoming Prime Minister that we were going to work harder.

Let us make it absolutely clear: everyone on this side is very happy to work five days a week in the parliament. We know that we have obligations and responsibilities to our constituents, who expect to see us on a Friday. The constituents of the member for Kalgoorlie expect to see him on a Friday. The constituents of the member for Kennedy expect to see him on a Friday. I also suggest the constituents of the member for Leichhardt certainly want to see him on a Friday. I would expect that all three of those members want to hear what their constituents think and want said on their behalf on a Friday. Having said all that, I note we are very prepared and very committed to sitting on a Friday. We on this side have no difficulty with sitting five days a week. Our concern is that Australians are being led to believe that it is a fair dinkum five-day sitting week. In fact, it is not.

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Leader of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It’s a clayton’s sitting week.

Brendan Nelson (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, it is a clayton’s sitting week. On that fifth day there will be no question time but we will have a sitting day. What that means is this. The taxes of the average Australian, who at the moment is struggling with increasing home mortgage interest rates, increased interest rates on their credit cards and on their car loans and is having to pay more to put petrol in their tank—even though they had been led to believe it would be cheaper with a change of government and their families are struggling with groceries—already contribute $1 million a day on average to the running of this parliament. This parliament is going to take $1 million of their money—it is not our money; it is their money—so we can come here to sit on a Friday. We on this side are very comfortable, very happy and very prepared to do that even though we believe our constituents will be disadvantaged by us not being in our electorates. We are prepared to do that but we expect, on behalf of the Australian people, that when we get here the Prime Minister is going to be sitting there, there is going to be a line of ministers along there and they are going to answer questions from here. That is our concern. The accountability of the executive to the legislature is here. It is all of us coming here from our electorates with the questions that our constituents—that is, fair dinkum everyday Australians—want asked on their behalf about the things they are really worried about—of the Prime Minister, whom I note is not here, of the Deputy Prime Minister, whom I note is not here, and of most of the ministers of the government, who are not here. We want them to be here to answer questions not only from us but, through us, from the people, the fair dinkum workers who are listening to Neil Mitchell on 3AW or from anyone else throughout Australia. They must answer questions about things about which they and their families are very concerned.

We were then told this, on 8 February this year. We had the release of an updated order of business with three minor changes. At this stage the average person out there is probably thinking, ‘What does this mean?’ We were told we would move one hour of government business from Tuesday to Monday, there would be documents and ministerial statements added to Monday but not a session for a matter of public importance. For those Australians who are listening to this, a matter of public importance is a matter whereby the parliament makes a decision on any one sitting day that something is so important that a debate should be brought on, usually by the opposition but sometimes by the government. For those listening, it follows question time. It provides the opportunity whereby, if the issue of the day is that grocery prices are causing families to actually have to go without food in the climate that they are in, we will have a debate about it. We expect the minister on the other side or the Prime Minister to actually engage in a debate with us about that issue of the day, that matter of public importance—important not only to us but, by definition, to the public, the people we represent. That is what we are upset about. We are upset about the fact that if we are here on a Friday a million dollars is ripped out of the pockets of the average working family by the government led by the Prime Minister. So we expect to be here to work. We expect the government to work. We expect it to be accountable, to answer questions on behalf of the Australian people.

This is very interesting. Today I listened very carefully to the Governor-General’s speech, which is, as we know, the speech of the government and its agenda for the forthcoming three years of this parliament. From page 18, under ‘Governance and transparency’, I quote:

The Government will implement new measures to help make government more accessible to the community and more transparent in its decision-making.

The Government will hold regular Community Cabinet meetings in capital cities, regional towns and remote communities across Australia.

Accountability actually means that you turn up. If the government believes the parliament should sit five days a week, we will support that as there are many things Australians are concerned about. They are very frightened, for example, about the lack of an economic plan from the Treasurer, who appears to be in a back room reading books about how to run an economy. That is one of the things they are frightened about. In fact, we want him and the Prime Minister and ministers to be here on Friday, to answer questions about those issues that worry average Australians.

The next issue about which I know other speakers on our side will speak is the legality of this. Okay, there is the morality of it, the morality of ripping a million dollars out of the pockets of Australians to fund the working of a parliament in which a Prime Minister does not turn up to answer any questions. There is that aspect to it, but we would like to see this legal advice. We also have legal advice and we are very concerned that this is in breach of section 39 of the Constitution in relation to quorums. The government owe it to the Australian people to show them the legal advice that they paid for which demonstrates and proves that this is constitutionally lawful. I also note that the leader of government business—

Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Leader of the House!

Brendan Nelson (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the House said that these things are, to use his expression, ‘good for opposition’. That implies that these changes are being made because, if they were not made, the opposition might be in some way disadvantaged. In fact, this is a disadvantage to the Australian people. In terms of transparency and openness, we have been lectured for some months by the Prime Minister, followed by a significant media machine, about how he is accessible and accountable. We listened ad nauseam in the parliament over the last year or so to the then Leader of the Opposition, now Prime Minister, making these statements about accountability. Here he is on 15 February 2005:

The core element of the Westminster system of government is ministerial accountability to parliament and to this House. The last time I looked, honourable members, the person who answers to this parliament on behalf of the government was called the Prime Minister ...

I could not have said it better myself.

Opposition Member:

Except on a Friday.

Brendan Nelson (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Except on a Friday. It reminds us of the last Labor Prime Minister we had, a man called Paul Keating, who put on a roster; he rostered himself on and off—which is probably the way we are heading back under the unionised government that has just been elected, and here we are already. We are going to have five sitting days, but the Prime Minister is not going to turn up on one of them. What will happen next week? Next week will we be told, ‘Well, actually he’s cutting back to three days a week and his ministers are cutting back further’?

The government is showing at this very early stage all of the evidence that it does not want to be accountable where it really counts. I also notice that the Prime Minister will be very, very happy to turn up on Gold FM, Triple M or any one of the very good radio programs across Australia—he will go on Rovebut I notice that he is not quite so willing to turn up to the scrutiny of the ABC and some of its more penetrating interviewers. I notice that those opposite have a very sophisticated way of avoiding scrutiny when it comes to the really tough interviews. That is now coming into the parliament; it is now coming in here.

The Australian people are not going to have their ministers turning up on a Friday, even though they are paying them good money to be here; those ministers are not going to turn up to answer questions. We are not going to have a debate on a Monday on a matter of public importance. If, for example, petrol goes from $1.35 to $1.50 a litre on Sunday, forget about having debate on a matter of public importance in the parliament.

Whilst I understand that Australians will always see the opposition questioning the motives of any government that moves to change the standing orders, it is very, very important that they understand that this is a significant change. For the first time we are going to have a scheduled sitting day without a question time, which is when questions are asked on behalf of Australians of the Prime Minister and his ministers. That is a step into a darkness of reduced accountability of the executive to the parliament—to the people of Australia—which is a backward step, and every Australian— (Time expired)

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the first Labor caucus meeting after the election victory of the Rudd government, a rather sobering fact was pointed out, I think by the chairman of caucus, Daryl Melham, the member for Banks. That is that only about a dozen of us have been members of a Labor government in this place previously; only about a dozen of us who are members of this government in the House of Representatives were members of the former Labor government that lost office in 1996. It is a rather sobering thought that I am one of them.

I actually was here for the last term of the former Labor government—and it does have its benefits; it does have significant benefits. In particular, in the context of this debate, it has given me some good memories. It has brought back great memories of the great champions of parliamentary democracy that from time to time lurk within the ranks of the Liberal and National parties. Sadly, those champions of parliamentary accountability and democracy have been on the interchange bench for a while—for nearly 12 years.

But what is extraordinary is the recovery, the amazing transformation, that has occurred. As a result of one election outcome, they are now in opposition, and the champions of accountability, the champions of parliamentary democracy—who for so long have been so quiet and who for so long have had nothing to say about the question of the accountability of the executive to this parliament—have suddenly rediscovered their voice. It is indeed a great thing—the change that an election brings and the sudden realisation that the atrocities that they have committed in government can no longer be seen as a good thing because they no longer suit their political interests.

The champions of parliamentary democracy that we see here today are the same people who for the last 11 or 12 years have done everything possible to restrict and minimise the ability of this parliament to scrutinise and hold to account the executive. Why? Because they were the executive; they were the government. Suddenly we see a dramatic change in tempo, a dramatic change in mood and a dramatic change in position on issues because they no longer are the government.

I turn to the individual reforms. There are a number of quite significant reforms here, the most important of which is the creation of more sitting days. There is a five-day sitting week for the parliament, which entails more private members’ business for the parliament, more government business for the parliament and more debate on bills than has previously been seen in the parliament. There are a number of other changes, which have not been mentioned much—although they have been mentioned by the Leader of the House—but which are worthy of noting: a petitions committee, so that petitions from the community can actually be dealt with seriously in this parliament—

Opposition Member:

Opposition member interjecting—

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What did you have when you were in government? You had nothing. You had nothing and made no attempt whatsoever to consider this issue. We have also enacted reforms to the Privileges Committee to ensure that it has a broader remit.

One thing the opposition are objecting to, and objecting to very vociferously, is the change in sitting arrangements. They are demanding more matters of public importance debates. They are suggesting that because we are moving private members’ business to Fridays there should be a matter of public importance on Mondays. In other words, when they were in government, for nearly 12 years, they were happy to allow the opposition to have three matters of public importance debates per week, but now they claim they are entitled to four MPI debates a week. Under this proposal from the government, there will be more question times than the average that applied over the course of the Howard government.

The arrangements that are proposed with respect to divisions and quorums that will apply on a Friday are precisely the same arrangements that were put in place by the former government, with the support of the then opposition, with respect to the 6.30 pm to 8 pm period on ordinary sitting days in order to facilitate sitting through dinner. They are precisely the same arrangements to defer quorum counts and to defer divisions for the convenience of the House. So, apparently, an arrangement that currently applies, at their instigation with our support, between 6.30 and 8.30 on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday is okay, but the same arrangement is not okay on Friday.

The logic that applies to the proposal we put forward for sittings on Fridays is the same logic that applied with respect to the creation of the Main Committee, which we in opposition also supported and which has proved a valuable mechanism for this parliament. We are putting forward a proposal that will mean more debate on government business and will mean less guillotining of important legislation. It will mean more opportunity for members of the opposition to debate government legislation than would otherwise be the case. And it will mean more opportunities for private members—whether they are government, opposition or crossbench members—to debate issues that they wish to raise in private members’ business, whether it is through the grievance debate, private members’ motions or 90-second statements.

Having been a backbencher briefly a few years ago, I am conscious of the fact that opportunities are fairly limited for backbenchers to get up in this parliament and speak on issues of concern, particularly to their own electorates, and on issues that they may not get an opportunity to deal with through legislation. Sometimes you have to wait quite a while to get an opportunity to get up and speak. Anything that expands the opportunity for ordinary members of parliament to make a contribution like that is a good thing.

I think it is worth scrutinising the content of the argument put forward by the opposition as to why these changes should not proceed. They are implying that somehow the amount of notice of the fine print, the detail of the proposals, they have received is inadequate. These are the same people who brought forward major legislation of far greater significance to the Australian people—like the Tampa legislation and like the Northern Territory intervention legislation—without any kind of serious notice to the parliament. The usual arrangement is that a bill is introduced one week and then formally debated the following week. The opposition gets an opportunity in the intervening period to consider that piece of legislation and form a view about whether it will vote for it. I can recall many times in opposition where that usual arrangement was breached by the former government.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Minister for Finance and Deregulation, the member for O’Connor has a point of order.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sit down. Take your seat. Learn your manners.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Excuse me. I have the chair, not you.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tell him to resume his seat.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I get to do that; you do not. Thank you. Please be seated. The member for O’Connor will be seated!

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I will not.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, you will. The member for O’Connor will be seated!

Opposition Member:

He has a point of order.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He can stand now. Thank you. The member for O’Connor.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you. The point of order is that the member is misleading the House. They said they would never do anything like he mentioned—

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member does not have a point of order. Please resume your seat.

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are doing better than Brendan, Wilson. That is a good start. I recall time after time the former government putting legislation to this parliament without any serious opportunity for the opposition to consider that legislation—legislation on absolutely critical issues of fundamental importance to this nation. Now they have the gall to stand up here and complain that they have received inadequate notice of changes to the standing orders that were publicly identified several weeks ago. They are the same people who were prepared to stand up here and introduce legislation on fundamentally important issues to the Australian people virtually without notice. They gave the opposition and the crossbench members virtually no opportunity to seriously consider the content of that legislation. They now have the absolute gall to complain about the amount of notice they get on changes that have been previously flagged by the government. That is simply astonishing.

It is also worth considering some of the specific propositions that the new Leader of the Opposition put forward. I have to say, first impressions count in this game. Today, we have seen a pretty ordinary start. The opposition leader has lost none of the unctuousness and the sophistry that carried him so well in his ministerial positions in the previous government. He is suggesting that we are going to be reducing the accountability of government as a result of these changes. In fact, the amount of government business time is actually going to increase—in other words, the opportunity for the parliament to hold the executive accountable on the most fundamental thing, legislation, will actually increase. The amount of time available to debate legislation will actually increase. The amount of question times being scheduled by the government will be actually higher for the forthcoming year than the average amount of question times per annum that occurred under the Howard government.

I notice that the opposition leader also complained about the fact that the Leader of the House identified through the media that these changes were going to occur. Again, this is the same group of people who routinely announced major policy changes and major government initiatives through the media, without announcing them in the parliament, without indicating to the parliament what the government’s priorities were. They made it a matter of routine to announce major initiatives through the media—on the Sunday morning TV shows, you name it. It happened time after time. Now, somehow, because they are in opposition, an indication in December—some time before the parliament is due to sit—through the media that the government is intending to make changes to the way that the parliament works is some kind of heinous offence. It really is an absurd proposition.

I noticed also that Dr Nelson, the opposition leader, stated that the Friday sittings that the government proposes will not be fair dinkum—that somehow they will not be real. Apart from anything else, this demonstrates extraordinary contempt for backbenchers, and extraordinary contempt for ordinary members of parliament and the private members’ business that will be transacted on those Fridays. And I noticed that the opposition leader complained about the possibility that perhaps not all ministers may be present during the transacting of this private members’ business. Can I ask the opposition leader how many Mondays he was in here, sitting in private members’ business and listening to the private members’ motions? How many Mondays was he loyally sitting in here listening even to the members of his own party making grievance speeches and doing private members’ motions? Somehow, transferring this from the Monday to the Friday—and I may not be here; I may be in my office or at a committee meeting or something like that—is dreadful, somehow it is wrong!

But the most extraordinary thing about the opposition leader’s contribution here and about the fact that he and his colleagues have listed over 40 speakers to speak on this motion is what it says about the priorities of the new opposition. Of all the issues that we in this parliament are now facing, of all the major themes that we have to grapple with, this is the big thing. This is the major issue, for which we have to line up virtually the entire caucus, the entire Liberal Party and National Party, to speak on. We actually pay to this issue the compliment of having the opposition leader make his first substantial speech in the parliament on this issue—working on Fridays. That is the issue that they are upset about: the prospect of a five-day working week.

It is not a big debate about whether or not we should have an apology to Indigenous Australians. That debate has been going on in public within the Liberal Party and the National Party, the coalition. They still have not quite worked out where they stand. They are divided; they are confused. It is not a debate about whether or not Work Choices is dead. The opposition leader says that Work Choices is dead. At the same time his deputy is out there with a shovel digging up the corpse, trying to revive it, trying to breathe life back into Frankenstein’s monster. It is not a debate about that, though, is it? It is not a debate about whether or not Work Choices, individual contracts and the ability to rip away penalty rates and overtime from ordinary working people should be in the legislation of this country. It is not about those issues either. And it is not about inflation. It is not about whether or not we need to cut back on government spending. The shadow Treasurer, the member for Wentworth, says that is all a fairytale. The Leader of the Opposition says that the former government left the economy in absolutely tiptop shape, absolutely perfect shape. He says that everything is fine, there is no problem.

None of these issues warrants a serious assault on the government, a serious attempt to create a major public policy debate in their first attempt as an opposition. The big issue is whether or not you get to turn up on Fridays, whether or not there should be a five-day parliamentary sitting week—that is the big issue! It tells you everything about the new Leader of the Opposition and everything about the new opposition. The hypocrisy of their position, where they are now standing up and advocating positions that they violently opposed and trod all over for the previous 12 years, really is breathtaking. I commend the motion to the House.

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The principle of accountability is clear. It is not a notional concept; it is a real concept.

... ministers must be responsible to the Parliament because the Parliament is the people’s house - that’s where the Executive of the Government answers to the people through the Parliament.

So said Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister, on 2UE on 5 December 2007. The Prime Minister himself said ministers must be accountable in the parliament. And what is the first decision of the new government in this parliament? It is to remove question time from sitting Fridays. For the first time since question times were inserted into the standing orders in 1950, we have a government that is scheduling sitting days without question times. We stand ready to come here on any day that is scheduled, but on that day we want the Prime Minister and the ministers to be accountable for their actions and their words.

I want to correct some of the misinformation being spread around by the Leader of the House. Let me be very clear. Since 1970, in election years the parliament has on average sat 57 days with 54 question times. In non-election years it has sat on average 69 days with 66 question times. Under the Howard government, in non-election years we averaged 70 days with 68 question times, which means that the Leader of the House has already deliberately misled the chamber about the record on question times—

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The member opposite accused me of deliberately misleading the House. He actually cannot do that except by a substantive motion. So either he moves a substantive motion or he withdraws.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for North Sydney, it is unparliamentary and I ask that you withdraw it.

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If it addresses the issue, I withdraw, but I will make this point—

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sorry. I withdraw.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, on the point of order: the member for North Sydney has to withdraw unconditionally.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am ruling that it was an unconditional withdrawal. The member for North Sydney has withdrawn unconditionally.

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

To quote the Leader of the House:

... you don’t need, on top of that—

that is, the actions of the government—

rules of engagement that allow a laziness and complacency to evolve in government.

They are his own words and yet the first action of the Leader of the House is to change the standing orders to remove, for the first time since federation, the capacity of the House on any single scheduled sitting day to have a question time. That is his first act and he says to the Australian people that it is the responsibility of the parliament to keep the government honest and to keep ministers accountable to avoid complacency, weakness and arrogance.

Let us be very clear about what the government is proposing here. They are increasing the scheduled sitting days for this year. We have no problems with that at all. In fact, we will be here en masse for those scheduled sitting days, and if they want to schedule more sitting days we will be here as well. What we have a problem with is that they are having no question time on 14 of those days. On 14 of those days there will be no question time. Since 1970, the highest number of scheduled sitting days without question time was seven. Now they are doubling it and they claim to be introducing greater accountability and greater transparency.

Secondly, and I think very significantly, the government is proposing to have no divisions or quorums during the course of private members’ business. This is a substantial initiative from this government. Previously there has been agreement between the government and the opposition that during dinner breaks quorums or divisions are deferred. In fact, it was in the standing orders that there would be quorums but they would be deferred. Now they are saying they are going to start a parliamentary sitting day without a quorum. They are trying to delay quorums until the end of a sitting day, despite the endeavours of the opposition to ensure that government members at least turn up.

We will—and I guarantee this—over the next few months, and years if necessary, remind this place and remind the government of the words of the new member for Leichhardt, who said:

From what I can gather, there won’t be any question time on Friday, so we will be able to shoot through ...

The new member for Leichhardt, who has not even made his maiden speech in this place, has said to the Australian public, ‘We are going to have a part-time parliament on Fridays.’ At the cost of a million dollars a day to the Australian taxpayers, we are not going to have the ministers turn up. The Prime Minister will be swanning around the country, but we are going to have parliament sit on a Friday. That is not accountability; that is not transparency; that is a fraud. You cannot claim to be a more accountable government and then schedule 14 sitting days of this parliament where the ministers and the Prime Minister do not even bother to turn up and where the member for Leichhardt cannot even get off his hide to stay here to do the job that the people of Leichhardt have put him in to do. If he does not want to be in parliament, we will find someone who wants to be in parliament. If other members of the government do not want to be here to answer the Australian people, we will find people who do, because that is what we believe in: accountability and transparency.

As though he had a gift from the gods, the Leader of House stood up in this place and said, ‘We have legal advice to say that our quorum arrangements are not in breach of section 39 of the Constitution.’ That is taxpayer funded advice—table the advice. It is very simple: table the advice. The Leader of the House stood in this place not a moment ago and said of this advice, ‘We have that legal advice to say it is all kosher.’ Well, table the advice. We have got no problems with it. The Leader of the House raised the issue of legal advice; he should table the advice. There is not going to be a day that passes where we will not be after that legal advice. If everything they are doing is kosher with the Constitution, which is very explicit about the quorum of this parliament, then they have got nothing to hide and they should table the legal advice. It was paid for by the taxpayers. The Leader of the House said, ‘We are going to be more transparent, open and honest.’ No problems, we agree; please be more transparent, accountable and honest. Table the legal advice saying that the quorum provisions that you are putting through the parliament tonight are legal. If you have got nothing to hide then no problem; we can accommodate that.

The amendments which we received at three o’clock today were 18 pages long and covered a vast range of issues. Only hours ago we got 18 pages of changes to the standing orders that, for the first time since Federation, guarantee that scheduled sitting days will not have question times. That is not good enough. That is not greater accountability, greater transparency and greater honesty; that is not being fair dinkum with the Australian people. That is not part of the equation.

It goes one step further. Understand the history of the current arrangements. There have been various manifestations of the standing orders and the scheduling of the parliament over the last few years, but the Howard government essentially kept the arrangements put in place by the Keating government in 1994 and the Hawke government in 1992, where at various times private members’ business moved from Friday to Monday. Even when Paul Keating was a part-time Prime Minister, he had a question time with private members’ business. Even Paul Keating—the bastion of accountability to this parliament, the part-time Prime Minister—had question times when there was private members’ business. He would not schedule a sitting day without question time, and nor would Bob Hawke or Gough Whitlam. None of them ever scheduled regular sitting days of this parliament without question times. This mob comes in here preaching and spinning about accountability and transparency to the Australian people, yet their first action is to reduce the accountability and transparency of their own government to this parliament.

The deal has always been—and it is in the House of Representatives Practicethat, when private members’ business is held on a Monday, there is an agreement between the opposition and the government that there will be no documents tabled, no ministerial statements, no MPI and, in return, there will be private members’ business. What has happened is that the Labor Party in government have taken away MPIs and private members’ business but reintroduced the tabling of documents and reintroduced ministerial statements. So they have covered themselves. They have broken the deal. They have covered themselves under the House of Representatives Practice, but they do not care about the opposition’s voice because they do not want accountability and transparency.

I will be moving a number of amendments to the proposal put forward by the government. Having only received these at three o’clock today, it is quite remarkable that we have been able to get eight amendments up. Do you know what, Mr Deputy Speaker? We want the parliament to sit more hours than the government is proposing, because we want question time every day. We want MPIs every day. We want accountability every day. We want to have a full-time government, not a part-time government. I seek leave to move together the amendments that have been circulated in my name. I will be seeking that at the appropriate time.

We are going to debate this and, if it needs to go all night, we will do it all night. We have never been in a situation where a government has tried to schedule regular sitting days of this parliament without the accountability of the Prime Minister and his ministers to this parliament. We believe in parliamentary democracy. We believe in the Westminster system. We believe in accountability. We believe in transparency—and do you know what else we believe in? We believe in the fact that this government cannot run roughshod over democracy. We will not cop that. The Australian people will not cop that.

It is an early indication of the arrogance of this government that they should seek without consultation to change the details of the standing orders to the detriment of the parliament and democracy. I tell you what, Mr Speaker: it is not good enough for them to present us only a few hours ago with the details of the changes to these standing orders and yet at the same time to go out and preach to the Australian people how they are a more accountable and transparent government. If you are going to be hypocrites, why do it so early in your term? You have the next three years to be hypocrites again. I do not think you will disappoint me in that regard. But the fundamental point is that you will disappoint the Australian people because you told the Australian people that you would be more accountable and yet for the first time since Federation you are scheduling regular sitting days and deliberately taking away the right of the Australian people to have questions asked of their Prime Minister and their ministers. That is a shame when it comes to democracy. It is a shame that it is the behaviour of a new government. It is arrogance in the extreme, and the losers out of this are the Australian people, who under the Labor Party are going to end up funding a part-time parliament.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Does the member for North Sydney seek leave?

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I did. I seek leave.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You haven’t sought leave.

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I did. I moved the amendments and I sought leave to have them dealt with—I am sorry.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for North Sydney was going to seek leave at the appropriate time.

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I did ask.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Then the leave has not been granted.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. What occurred during the debate was that the Manager of Opposition Business sought leave. It was not granted, because you did not proceed with that. He has not moved the amendments. I have no problem with someone else being given leave—

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I moved them.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The amendments were not moved by the Manager of Opposition Business.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I heard what the member for North Sydney said. I thought he said he would move them at the appropriate time—he sought leave. But I then did not ask: is leave granted?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker: the Manager of Opposition Business did indeed indicate that at an appropriate time—

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I didn’t say at an appropriate time.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He did say that—that he would move the amendments. He did not do that, Mr Deputy Speaker. You have to, in moving an amendment—I’ve got a bit of experience of opposition over 12 years, Joe—read it into the Hansard.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister has made his point of order. The member for North Sydney did seek leave, and I at the time did not pull him up and ask, ‘Is leave granted?’, but you then handed the amendments to one of the clerks. The member for North Sydney asks whether leave is granted. It would assist the House—

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When do you want to knock off, Albanese?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am fine. I quite like the parliament. My point of order is this: we have no problem with granting leave to the opposition. We are not trying to be difficult here. But the fact is that the amendments have not been moved. We can now give leave to someone. Given that you yourself, Mr Deputy Speaker—

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I haven’t sat the member for North Sydney down.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

His time has expired, Mr Deputy Speaker. You have to do it within your 20 minutes.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister will resume his seat. The member for North Sydney sought leave, he passed the amendments to the Clerk and he has moved them. I am ruling that he has moved them. I had not sat down the member for North Sydney and, as he walked, I said, ‘Would you please move those amendments.’

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

To assist the House, Mr Deputy Speaker: I said during my speech, ‘I move these amendments,’ handed them to the Clerk and said, ‘I seek leave to have them debated together.’ I moved the amendments and I passed them to the Clerk to seek leave. If you want to deal with them one by one, I am happy to accommodate that. I am trying to be helpful here, but if the Leader of the House thinks he is being a little bit cute—

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I’m not!

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I deliberately did move them.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Leader of the House, it would help the House considerably if you would grant leave. I have consulted with the clerks, and the member for North Sydney confirmed what I have already ruled, which is that the member for North Sydney asked leave to move his amendments together. It would assist the House if the minister would grant leave and we could then proceed.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I have no problem with granting leave. That does not mean, though, that the amendments have been moved, and the member’s time has expired. Someone else will have to move them.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I ask the minister: it would assist the House if you would grant leave for these amendments to be moved together; is leave granted?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have no problem with granting leave.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Then leave is granted.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

But someone has to move them now.

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I moved them!

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will now call the member for North Sydney in his concluding remarks—

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to, once again, for the edification of the Leader of the House, point out that I said: ‘I move the amendments and I seek leave that they be debated together.’ That is what I did. I moved the amendments and I sought leave for them to be debated together. I handed them to the Clerk.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is right.

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And I asked for the Leader of the House to assist the House by granting leave. The minister has agreed to grant leave; I will call for the seconder.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What is your point of order?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My point of order is this, and it will finish up here: leave has been granted. We are not trying to be difficult here. The fact is, though, that leave was granted after the member’s time had expired. There is a problem—by definition, that has occurred. Someone else should move it. If, perchance, these amendments were carried, there would be a big problem here. This is a debate about standing orders. This is a debate about order in the House. What is occurring here is that standing orders are being—

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister has made his point; he is now debating the issue.

The amendments read as follows—

(1)

Proposed standing order 29, “Set meeting and adjournment times”, line beginning “Friday”, Omit the line, substitute: “Friday 8.30am  4.20 pm”.

(2)

Proposed standing order 31, “Automatic adjournment of the House”, omit paragraph (d).

(3)

That the Order of Business figure following proposed standing order 34 “Order of Business” be omitted and the “Order of Business” figure attached to these amendments substituted.

(4)

Proposed standing order 43 “Members’ statements on Fridays”, omit “The period allowed for these statements shall extend until 9.15 am”, substitute:       “The period allowed for these statements shall extend until 8.45 am.”

(5)

After proposed standing order 44 “Grievance debate” insert:       46 Discussion of definite matter of public importance

(6)

Proposed standing order 133 “Deferred divisions on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays”, omit the heading, substitute:       “133 Deferred divisions on Mondays and Tuesdays”.

(7)

Proposed standing order 133 “Deferred divisions on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays”, omit paragraph (b).

(8)

After proposed standing order 55 “Lack of quorum”, insert:       “97 Daily Question Time

And an amendment to the House of Representatives Order of Business.

The amendment to the House of Representatives Order of Business read as follows—

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES – CHAMBER ORDER OF BUSINESS

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I call the honourable member for Curtin to second the amendments.

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendments and reserve my right to speak.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that the motion be agreed to. To this the honourable member for North Sydney has moved certain amendments. The question now is that the amendments be agreed to.

Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, we have had a vintage performance from the Manager of Opposition Business. I was certainly moved by his outrage. In fact, I was quivering when he was addressing the issue of a quorum. But I do understand from his contribution that he has no idea of exactly what is being done.

Let me make the first point: all honourable members who are in the chamber will hear the confection and outrage about quorums. Well, on a sitting Friday, on private members’ business Friday, you have to start with a quorum, and we will be starting with a quorum. There is nothing in these standing orders that changes the requirement for a starting quorum on a Monday, on a Tuesday, on a Wednesday, on a Thursday or on a Friday. So all that outrage about ‘no quorum to start the sitting on Friday’ is absolutely wrong—dead wrong!

What else is happening to quorums? Honourable members who have been in this parliament before will know that we have an arrangement on Mondays and Tuesdays for the dinner break. Anyone can call a division then; anyone can call a quorum. But, if they do, it is deferred.

Petro Georgiou (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

By agreement.

Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

By arrangement, we don’t—absolutely. And do you know what? On sitting Fridays, when private members’ business is being conducted, you can call a quorum if you want, but it will be deferred—big deal!

Petro Georgiou (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a big deal!

Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Honourable members opposite do not seem to understand that what has happened is we are shifting private members’ business on a Monday to exclusively have private members’ business on a Friday—no government legislation, no bills and no ministerial statements. It is purely devoted to backbench members—such as even Wilson Tuckey! You know, if you ask for a Friday, Wilson, you will be able to utilise—

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The point of order is that apparently we are even going to undermine the standing orders.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What is your point of order?

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am the member for O’Connor in this place, and it is not a bad idea that someone who is lecturing us on the standing orders complies with them!

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for O’Connor will resume his seat. He does not have a point of order; he has got a point.

Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I apologise to the member for O’Connor.

Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mrs Hull interjecting

Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I acknowledge that, Kay—I mean, Member for Riverina. But the point is this: what is being conducted on a Friday is exclusively for private members. Member for O’Connor, let me make the point that the amount of business is increasing quite dramatically. There will be something like 40 hours of extra time if you are moving a delegation report or a committee report or a private member’s motion. It is about 40 hours extra time compared to the time that you provided in the last parliament and what would still be the case if there had not been an election—40 hours of extra debate. That means every backbencher, should they decide to put in a notice of motion of concern to their constituents or about a particular passion of theirs, will be able to get that into the House and debate it. In this government you are going have more opportunity—

Debate interrupted; adjournment proposed and negatived.

We are going to get more time. Private members can come to the parliament and talk about the passions that interest them. It may be about the situation in East Timor. It may be about the provision of a drug on the PBS. I do not know what they may raise, but they are free to raise it and they will have more time to raise it. Isn’t that an important responsibility that all of us share—that is, the backbench members, not the executive? There is no extra time for the executive, no extra time for parliamentary secretaries, no extra time for ministers; it is all extra time for the backbenchers. And, by the way, your shadow ministers, just as we did in the last parliament, can also move private member’s motions, so they will have more opportunities. How can you possibly argue, as the Leader of the Opposition argued, that somehow this is less accountable?

The point I want to make is as follows. What state does the Manager of Opposition Business, Mr Hockey, come from? New South Wales. What state does the Leader of the Opposition come from? New South Wales. What state does the shadow Treasurer come from? New South Wales. And what has been happening in the New South Wales parliament since 2002? They have got private members’ Fridays. If the Manager of Opposition Business were half fair dinkum, he would be getting on to the Leader of the Opposition in New South Wales and saying, ‘Are you going to promise to bring in a question time on Fridays if you win the next election? Are you going to bring in ministerial statements on Fridays if you win the next election?’

Under these proposals, there are no fewer question times in the sitting pattern. We are still having a question time on Monday, we are still having a question time on Tuesday, we are still having a question time on Wednesday and we are still having a question time on Thursday. Why would you have a question time when a day is especially devoted to the backbench, with more hours to the backbench?

Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mrs Hull interjecting

Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I say to the member for Riverina: there is an improvement in terms of committee reports. I acknowledge that the member for Riverina chaired a very important committee in the last parliament. You can be in this parliament on a Friday tabling your report and you will still get the same five minutes a side for the report, but at 10 o’clock in the Main Committee all your committee members who serve with you can have another 15 minutes—and you can as well. All those backbench members who serve tirelessly on parliamentary committees trying to bring reform and change, who listen during their parliamentary committee work to the people of Australia out there in voter land, can get 15 minutes on the reports. You know what? Under these reforms, almost contemporaneously with the report tabling, those members who are not chairs or deputy chairs can be in the Main Committee for at least 15 minutes talking about the report, talking about the recommendations, talking about why they are so important either for their constituents or for Australia as a whole. I think that this is a welcome move.

Do you think that the opposition have a good track record when it comes to giving breaks for backbenchers? Of course not. The most significant reform in recent time was the establishment of the Main Committee—and guess what: the opposition of the day bitterly opposed it. It was damnation! It was ruination! Democracy was utterly going to collapse! And you know what? In the UK they thought it was such a good idea that the ‘mother parliament’ has got Westminster Hall. It is an exact copy of the Main Committee, which the coalition so bitterly opposed as a ‘damnation of democracy’ here in Australia.

I am quite unashamed. I want to say on the public record to the Leader of the House that I think that this is an important reform. And like the Howard government previously and people like the member for McPherson, who chaired the Procedure Committee—as with all new arrangements, new changes—we will have a look at it in the Procedure Committee and see how well and effectively it is working. But do not come into the parliament and say, ‘Backbench members are getting less opportunity; they are being denied opportunity,’ or give some cock-and-bull story about there being less accountability because of these changes to devote a special day to private members, or say that somehow these arrangements are going to absolutely abolish the need to have a quorum at the start of the parliament on Friday, that no-one can be here and the Speaker can be forced to commence the proceedings. You just do not understand what is being proposed and, more importantly, you are misunderstanding the benefits that backbenchers on this side of the House—and, I might say, backbenchers on that side of the House and the occasional shadow minister—are going to gain from these changes.

The last point I would like to talk about is the proposal regarding nursing mothers. Please understand that there was an agreement on this issue between the chief whips in the last parliament. This does not exactly reflect that agreement because we use the term ‘lactating mothers’. That is the only difference in the motion being proposed, with one exception. Again, I give credit to the honourable member for Riverina: she requested it. I thought it was a reasonable proposition and the Leader of the House agreed. We have a statement that it will not be used as a precedent for any other situation. It is a system that utterly depends on the honour of the Chief Opposition Whip and me. If we lack honesty and we lack integrity then it will fail.

But I want to make this point: no woman in the parliament, on either side, has approached me and said that we need this provision—not one. There has been no committee of women who thought it up and said that we need to do it. But it is about time that the parliament understood that, increasingly, young women are coming into this parliament wanting to combine their careers as parliamentarians and mothers and, indeed, the joy of having a child. The old men’s club has to wake up at some point and understand that the rules need to change. We may never need this provision in this parliament, it might never be utilised, but we are drawing a line in the sand and saying that, bit by bit, we are going to change and acknowledge the fact that, increasingly, we have women members. We have 11 women members in the new class of 2007 and, over time, we will have even more women coming into parliament. We need to start taking that into account and make changes to make this a more family-friendly parliament and acknowledge the younger members, including women, who are coming into parliament.

If I had listened to the opposition and believed all they said, I do not know how I could possibly vote for these proposals. I think the opposition has completely misunderstood the intent and purpose of the proposals. There is always the safety factor that the Procedure Committee will review them, finetune them and make changes. Can I put something on the table and say that I would be very happy if the Procedure Committee looked at, for example, a standard finishing time of eight o’clock on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Will that happen? I do not know. But I sincerely hope that the Procedure Committee, when it is established—if we can ever establish it tonight—might get a chance to review these new arrangements and come up with appropriate recommendations.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I remind the member for Chifley that everything he has said will be achieved by the amendments proposed by the opposition. The essence of what we are proposing is that there be the same accountability on Fridays as there is on other days of the week. The feature that distinguishes the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy from so many others around the world is the accountability of the executive at question time. It is fundamental. It is the most important part of parliament. For most members of the public it is when they see their government held to account. To have a meeting of parliament without question time really is denying the very essence of the accountability that we hold so dear. So that the members of the government can address this point, I particularly want to draw to the attention of the House section 39 of the Constitution. It states:

Until the Parliament otherwise provides, the presence of at least one-third of the whole number of the members of the House of Representatives shall be necessary to constitute a meeting of the House for the exercise of its powers.

‘Parliament’ means the House, the Senate and the Governor-General—the Queen, the sovereign. In 1989 the parliament ‘otherwise provided’ to reduce the quorum down to one-fifth. That is why the quorum is now 30; otherwise, it would have been 50. The simple fact is that the House cannot meet without a quorum. We are free to agree, if we wish, not to call a quorum. That is, in effect, what the existing standing orders do in the 6.30 to eight o’clock timeslot, and that is reflected in the standing orders at the moment. But the constitutional fact remains that, if a quorum is not present, the House cannot meet, and deferring a quorum is simply not constitutional. I see that the member for Isaacs is here. I welcome him, as a new member, to the House, and I invite him to comment on this.

The language of the Constitution is absolutely clear: the House cannot meet unless a quorum is present. If a quorum is called at any time on a Friday, it has to be dealt with when it is called. You cannot defer a quorum by virtue of the standing orders because otherwise you would be able to subvert the whole purpose of the constitutional provision. At the very heart of this proposal by the government is an infringement, a breach, a denial of the Constitution itself. They say they have legal advice. Let us see it. That is the point. The Constitution is plain: you cannot have a meeting of the House unless there is a quorum present. That is the point. What power is there in the standing orders to overrule the Constitution of the Commonwealth?

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Only a few hours ago after the appointment of the Speaker, the Prime Minister was talking about the importance of having a parliament that functions smoothly, provides opportunity for policy debates and gives an opportunity for members of parliament to keep the government accountable. He has said that on a number of occasions previously, and members have quoted from his earlier statements. Let me add another one. On the Nine network this week—not an ancient comment, just this week—the Prime Minister said:

… my job—

as the Prime Minister—

is to try and restore some respect to the place …

The Prime Minister earlier said:

In the past I think a bad tradition has crept in whereby rarely was the parliament used as the forum of the people … I will be encouraging ministers to use the parliament much more in that respect …

So a couple of days ago the Prime Minister was going to ask his ministers to use the parliament more. A few hours later, 14 sitting days will be held every year without a minister present, without anybody bothering to show up. What sort of accountability is that? Indeed, we will have a part-time parliament. There will be several days a week when ministers will attend, but on Fridays no ministers will be present in the parliament.

The reforms being presented today are not minor adjustments to the standing orders. This is radical reform that reduces the accountability of the parliament. And I am glad to be speaking after the Chief Government Whip, because it is well known around the place that he is the architect of these new proposals, and he has embarrassed the Leader of the House by trying to force them through the parliament. I think the Leader of the House knows that this is an assault on the democratic process and that this is denying the proper processes of accountability in the parliament, yet he is being set up here by the Chief Government Whip to try and put these sorts of proposals through the parliament.

It has always been the tradition that the government consults the opposition about significant changes to the standing orders. That has not happened in this case. The government announced before Christmas that they were going to make these significant changes—with a lot of fanfare, with the usual compliant media trotting along in agreement. This was sold to us by the Leader of the House as being extra sitting days, extra accountability. In reality, it is not. It is less accountability.

There will be fewer question times under these new arrangements than there were previously. There will be more sitting days with no ministers present than we have ever countenanced in the past. There will be less accountability, fewer opportunities for questions to be asked, fewer answers provided. There will be fewer sitting weeks than there have traditionally been in the past. There will be more days when there will be no ministers present but fewer when the parliament will have the opportunity to question ministers and to get answers. There will be fewer weeks, fewer question times, fewer matters of public importance. Ministers will attend parliament less often. That is the fundamental nature of these reforms and we should not forget it.

The government is bringing this in without going through a proper process of consultation. In an announcement in the media five hours before this debate begins, details of the proposals are made public. It has not gone off to the Procedure Committee, as you would normally expect. We have had Procedure Committee meetings regularly, year in, year out. There have been plenty of opportunities to talk about these sorts of things; it has not happened. We could in fact have a Procedure Committee meeting over the next week or two and introduce these things a little bit later on, but, no, the government is going to insist that these items, these changes, be imposed upon the parliament immediately. That is not an appropriate way for us to negotiate the workings of this parliament.

A lot of the procedures in this parliament are essentially by convention. They are not written in detail in the standing orders. They are not in the Constitution. They are by convention. If the government is going to break down the convention by just arrogantly imposing its will on the everyday sittings of the parliament, the trust and the confidence that makes this parliament work will be destroyed.

The Keating government went into its second term before the most arrogant Prime Minister in our history declared that he was too important to have to attend parliament, rostering himself off every second day. The Keating government went into its second term before ministers decided that only half of them needed to be bothered to turn up every day. This government is doing it on its very first day. Ministers are going to excuse themselves from 14 sitting days in a year.

I know we have all heard about the new frontbench made up of 70 per cent union officials. They are experts at negotiating, I am told, the best possible pay and conditions. Well, they have really hit the jackpot here. On their very first day, the frontbench, the union officials, have negotiated themselves a rostered day off every Friday. Every Friday they take the day off—14 days off before they have even started, no cuts in pay, no improvements in productivity, just 14 days off a year before we even start.

I would like to emphasise that this is a thinly disguised attempt by the government to make sure that ministers can trip around the country, do whatever they like, and not turn up for parliament on this day. They have no intention of being here on a Friday. I challenge the two ministers at the table to give us a guarantee that they will be here on Fridays. I challenge the Leader of the House: will you be here on Fridays? One of the ministers previously at the table has already acknowledged that he has got no intention of being here on a Friday.

If you ever had any doubt that some of them might turn up, ask yourself: why we are getting up on Thursdays at 5 pm? Why are we not sitting for an extra five hours on Thursday? If we were then you would not need the extra day on Friday. Most members are going to have to stay here in Canberra on Thursday night, but the House is getting up at five o’clock. Well, the cat is out of the bag: the reason it is getting up at five o’clock is that the ministers will all be flying out. They will all be leaving on Thursday afternoon, and you will not see them again.

Can I address a few comments to the government backbenchers, who are the victims of a lot of these proposed changes. You are the cannon fodder. You are the people that are expected to turn up for the divisions. You are the ones that are going to have to be here when the quorums are called. Your days are going to be ruined because there will be quorum after quorum after quorum after quorum. You are the victims. You are going to be expected to sit here in the parliament and work all day Friday while your leaders, the frontbench, are all at home. They are all at the cricket, having lunch or having the day off, but you are going to have to stay here working.

On Thursday nights, when you are sitting alone in your hotel room in Canberra, you will know that the ministers are already back with their families in their capital cities, enjoying a night with their kids or going to the school play. You will be here lonely and deserted in Canberra while your ministers are enjoying themselves back at home. And all day Friday, when you are here working, the ministers will be off to have lunch with their mates. They will be tripping around the countryside, having another rostered day off.

Most of you are union officials as well. How did you let them get away with this? You have a reputation for your tough negotiating skills but you have let your bosses take the day off while you stay working in the factory. What sort of a deal is that? You have certainly allowed the frontbench, the union bosses, to ride roughshod over you on your very first day. You will have to work here in parliament on Friday but no-one will be listening. You will be making a grievance debate speech but the minister who can fix it will not be here; he will be at the cricket or having lunch with his mates. You will be wanting to raise a matter of significance in a 90-second statement and there will be nobody here to listen. Nobody who has the capacity to make a decision will even be listening. They will all be travelling around the countryside having a great time while you are here doing the hackwork.

We are prepared to be here. We are prepared to do what needs to be done. We are prepared to have more parliamentary sittings. It is pretty tough for people who live in Western Australia or even in a country area like mine. I will not be able to get home at all on the weekends because of the time that is involved. But I will be here and I will be enthusiastically wanting to ask questions of ministers who will not be here. They are probably going to be campaigning in your electorate or mine while we are here doing our jobs for the parliament. Let me assure you that I, for one, will be asking questions every week about where the ministers were on Friday. Were they in the parliament answering to the parliamentarians and to the people or were they off enjoying themselves on their rostered day off?

I will be asking where the government members are. We have already had one member, the member for Leichhardt, let the cat out of the bag. He is going to shoot through. I will be making sure that the people of Leichhardt know that their member shot through—that because he thought the parliamentary sittings so unimportant and because he had no matters of importance to raise from the people of his electorate he shot through. You cannot blame him for planning to shoot through, because there will be no minister here to hear what he has to say. Whatever he says will be lost. His pearls of wisdom will disappear into thin air because there will be no minister here to hear them. There will be no accountability; there will be no opportunity to get the facts through and to make sure that the concerns of your constituents can be genuinely heard.

Where will our ministers be? The Leader of the House is obviously embarrassed to have to try to pilot through the parliament this lemon of a change to the sitting arrangements of the parliament, which will reduce accountability and make the life of his backbench members pretty uncomfortable. The Chief Government Whip is the one who is going to have to lock you all in this place for the Friday. He will have to lock you in here because you will have to be here to make up the numbers. Your ministers will not. They will all be having their rostered days off. I think it is about time you asked when you will have your rostered days off. The ministers will not be in here for the quorums; it will be the backbenchers who will be in here for the quorums. You are the ones who are going to have to try to make this new system work, because the ministers are simply walking away from it.

If I am to support proposals like this, I want an assurance that ministers will be present on Friday. If they are prepared to give us an assurance that they will be here when the parliament is sitting then that will make the sittings worth while. Members will feel that what they have to say, their contributions on important issues, will be listened to by the people who can make decisions. But, if the ministers are not going to be here, they should not be such hypocrites as to demand that other people are here when they are not. Do not be such a hypocrite as to suggest that other people should come here and make the parliament work when those who are supposed to be accountable—the ministers, the heads of department, the people who are supposed to be running the policy of our nation—are not here. If they are not here then why would you reasonably expect that other people should come? If we are going to sit on Friday, we have to have ministers in the House, we have to have a question time and we have to have a matter of public importance. It has to be a proper parliamentary sitting day.

While I am at it, why can’t we have a matter of public importance debate on a Monday? Why does that have to be left off the program as well? Particularly as you are proposing to have these extra private members business hours on a Friday, why aren’t we also having an MPI on a Monday? The reality is that this government does not want any accountability. It does not want to have to answer the questions. It has been elected with no ideas, it does not know what it is going to do, it does not have a clue how to manage the economy—it is going to fly in 1,000 people to give it a few ideas so that it knows what to do—and so it is trying to avoid scrutiny.

I welcome the architect of the ideas back into the chamber, because he is going to have the tough job of trying to explain to people why this will be of any benefit at all to them. Has he endeavoured to explain to his backbenchers why it is reasonable for them to sit here in Canberra while the ministers are all at home enjoying life with their families, while they are rostered off for every Friday? Why is that fair? Why is that reasonable? Why couldn’t you consult the parliament about introducing a fair and reasonable system? This is an assault on accountability. This is a dreadful start for a government that came in suggesting that it was going to be more accountable and more open. This will be a closed government not prepared to answer questions and not prepared to expose itself to scrutiny.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I congratulate you on your election today, Madam Deputy Speaker Burke. We are already at the longest first day of parliament that this House has seen. We are here debating and we have had the other side alleging that there has been a lack of consultation. I want to deal with the consultation issue before I hit any of the substantive issues themselves.

First of all, we just heard from the member for Wide Bay that the way to introduce changes to procedures is always to do it through the Standing Committee on Procedure prior to introduction. Let us not forget the last time we had a change in procedure in this House. The last time it occurred was with a change to the MPI rules. The previous Leader of the House was sick of the Independent members jumping for the call during MPIs, so, instead of allowing the MPI to go for as long as members of parliament chose to jump, the government put a time limit on it. Did that go to the Procedure Committee prior to the decision, because that was the last time that the previous government made a change to procedures? Did that go to the Procedure Committee? No, it did not go to the Procedure Committee. We found out about it when it was put on the Notice Paper the day before. We came in that morning, had a look at it, and that was when we found out about it. The complaint about lack of consultation at the moment is a complaint about something that was announced weeks and weeks ago, something that was made clear a very long time ago. We get told: ‘We knew about the detail—that was not necessarily a problem—but we hadn’t seen the piece of paper.’

Let us not forget a rather significant ‘piece of paper’ that went through this very chamber during the last parliament—a ‘piece of paper’ that ran for about 700 pages called Work Choices. I remember sitting over there on that side when we started the debate, and not one member of the parliament was even able to have a copy of the bill. The bill itself was not available to the parliament when the parliament began debating it! And now we hear a complaint about something that only runs for a page and a half: ‘We only got the final detail five hours earlier.’ We were expected to commence debate on something that was going to tear out the rights of working families. When we came to the chamber to debate it, the copies still had not reached this chamber. So, please, if you want to have an argument about the substantive issues, have an argument about the substantive issues, but don’t come crawling into the chamber complaining about the lack of procedure when what you have been given, in every sense, is way in excess of what the previous government ever offered the then opposition—ever.

So what do these changes mean? What is it that the opposition are actually getting outraged about? Well, we used to have three MPIs in the course of a week. And, outrageously, this year we are going to have, in the course of a week, three MPIs. In the course of a week we also used to have four question times. And, outrageously, this year, in the course of a week, we are going to have four question times. But what is also going to happen is that we are no longer going to be getting rid of private members’ business. We are no longer going to be having the situation, as we had in the last parliament, where the executive says, ‘What backbenchers want to move in private members’ business or what people want to talk about in a grievance debate—we’ll just knock those off the agenda every time we aren’t able to keep up with the program.’ Of the 53 weeks of sitting in the last parliament, on 17 occasions there was no private members’ business at all. By having the Friday sittings we are guaranteeing that private members’ business will no longer be knocked off. That is what used to happen. So we are going to a situation where you will get the same number of question times, you will get the same number of MPIs, but the backbench will be guaranteed to be able to have their say.

It is probably no surprise that the current frontbench of the coalition is a bit upset. I have to say, if there were ever a group of people who would have a clear incentive to make sure their backbench did not have too much to say, it would be the current opposition. They have gone through this period of wanting to find something to be passionate about. We had the speeches and we heard the interviews on what they would be passionate about. Are they passionate about saving Work Choices? Some of them say they are; some of them say they are not. They will go back and forth trying to work out what issues they will be passionate about there.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. It is a matter of relevance. This is a question about standing orders. The minister will get plenty of time on a future occasion, if his boss lets him, to talk about Work Choices and other issues. I suggest he sticks to—

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for O’Connor will resume his seat. He has made his point of order. This has been a far-reaching debate. I think the minister is in order.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not think the member for O’Connor appreciates the level of passion that the Australian people have seen from this opposition for the first time. Everything else has been: ‘We’re not sure what we think about this; we’ll wait to see what we think about that. We need to consult; we need to have the form of leadership that says, “I’m going to lead by finding out what everybody tells me to think and then, once they’ve told me, I’ll show that sort of leadership.”’ That has all been put out there. But then, finally, we get passion. And the same group of people who were able to be quite dismissive about taking away the rights of workers, the same group of people who had no plans for the future and were not willing to get passionate about somebody losing their entitlements, were able to find real passion today—because whose working lives were they talking about? Their own. Finally, we find members of the coalition caring about working families—their own working families. They are the only ones that you will see any level of passion about from the opposition.

Of all the people to have led the case for the opposition on this, we have the same person who did not care about 100 per cent of AWAs taking away at least one protected award condition but did care about what his working day would be like on a Friday. He did not care when 63 per cent of all agreements removed penalty rates but he did care whether or not he would get an RDO on a Friday. He did not care whether 52 per cent of AWAs removed shiftwork loadings but did care about whether or not he would get a bonus MPI to be able to put away some of the private members’ business. He did not care about 46 per cent of AWAs cutting public holiday payments but he did care, and did care passionately, about his alleged right to try to pick up a public holiday every Friday. Under this government—

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You’re saying that constituent work isn’t work!

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for O’Connor!

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, he’s saying he doesn’t believe in his constituency, Madam Deputy Speaker. He doesn’t want to—

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for O’Connor will be warned if he is not careful.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have to say, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I am so glad he put that on the record, because the Leader of the Opposition said the exact opposite. The Leader of the Opposition was saying, ‘We believe our constituents will be disadvantaged by our not being in our electorates.’ The Leader of the Opposition says he believes the constituents will be disadvantaged by this, and yet he says he is willing to support sitting on Fridays. He wants to change all the rules. He says he is willing to go along with sitting on Fridays but he says he believes his constituents will be disadvantaged. I do not share that concern. I actually think our constituents do well by the advocacy that we run in this parliament. I am surprised that he thinks so little of his own role that he is willing to say that, if they are not there on a Friday, if he is not out in his electorate on a Friday but is—allegedly—representing his constituents in the parliament, they are being disadvantaged by that. But, if he does believe they are being disadvantaged by that, he should not come in here and argue, ‘We’ll go along with the change but it is just the question time bit that we care about’ or ‘it is just the MPI bit that we care about.’

The truth is what the opposition cares about in this is their own working day. The very same group of people that was willing to carve up the working day of working families in Australia suddenly finds a new level of passion and a new level of energy that no radio interview has shown, that no speech has shown and that no in-depth interview on one of the Sunday morning programs has shown. Today in this parliament we get venom, we get passion and we get real anger. We get people like the current Manager of Opposition Business and like the current—and I use the word ‘current’ carefully—Leader of the Opposition showing this level of absolute passion: ‘While we might be willing to get rid of the working conditions of other people, don’t get rid of the working conditions of members of the Liberal Party and the National Party in this place.’

We do not think it is that outrageous for parliament to sit five days a week, and we certainly do not think it is outrageous to replace a system where there used to be four question times with a new system where there will be four question times. We do not think it is outrageous to replace a system where there used to be three MPIs with a new system where there will be three MPIs. But we do think it is important to make sure that we no longer get rid of 17 days of private members’ business. We believe it is important that when local members of parliament put a motion on the Notice Paper they actually have a chance of its being debated. We want to make sure that when local members of parliament want to participate in the grievance debate on behalf of their constituents they actually get the opportunity to do so here in this parliament. One of the interjections that came over earlier from members of the opposition was, ‘Oh, well, they’ve got the Main Committee in which to do that.’ Sorry, but the Main Committee was never set up as a way of preventing local members of parliament from ever being able to advocate in this room. This room is not meant to be the wholly owned subsidiary of the executive so backbench members of parliament never have an opportunity to speak. That might be the vision of some people who were in the previous government, but that is certainly not the way that this government runs things. If you want to fix that, you have to allocate dedicated time for private members’ business.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Tuckey interjecting

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

‘Like the Mondays,’ the member for O’Connor says. That is right: the Mondays where 17 out of 53 never happened! Mind you, there have been times in the past when parliament has sat on a Friday. It did not happen during the last term, but there have been times when parliament has sat on a Friday because there was legislation that had to kick over—we had to wait for a message to come back from the Senate. So what did we do? We used to pretend it was still Thursday. That is what we used to do. We would let the House go until about midnight or shortly after, we would then adjourn and when we came back on the Friday we would pretend it was still Thursday. That is the way in which the previous government used to have very occasional Friday sittings without there being a question time. We are making sure that parliament will sit longer than it used to. We are making sure that parliamentarians will have the opportunity, one that used to be taken from them, to actually represent their constituencies.

If there were ever a signal of what the opposition believe passionately in and of how clearly they care about this issue, it would be to look at the order of speakers. On this issue they have put forward 46 speakers on their list. I will be the final speaker for the government, but we are looking forward to hearing—if they want to go through all the 46 on their list—their speakers. We are here to listen. It is an interesting circular list. It begins with the Leader of the Opposition and the member for North Sydney, both of them from the north side of Sydney. It ends with the member for Macarthur, who is also now from the north side of Sydney. So there is a lovely circularity to the speaking order and I want to see it run all the way, beginning on the North Shore of Sydney and ending on the North Shore of Sydney.

There is a reason why the people opposite fell out of touch; there is a reason why it happened. It is that sort of contempt in their thinking: ‘Let’s have a quick slogan. Let’s find something to complain about. Let’s just have a quick slogan and put the message out and maybe the public will buy it. Maybe we’ll be able to bluff it through.’ There comes a point where those sorts of arguments run out. If anyone from the other side wants to come up here and argue that somehow parliamentary business is going to suffer and accountability is going to suffer under this new system, then they will have to explain why four in 2008 is a smaller number than four was in 2007—because the number of question times is the same. They will have to explain why three MPIs in 2008 are fewer than three MPIs in 2007. As a group of people who did not put things through the Procedure Committee, as a group of people who readily gagged debate, as a group of people who dumped on this parliament most significant legislation to take away the rights of working families and started the debate without a copy of the bill even being in the room, they do not have a lot to start with. But by the time they get to the member for Macarthur, who has recently moved to the north side of Sydney, it is going to be a great finish.

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

May we look back on this first day of the 42nd Parliament and ask, ‘How did a new government get so arrogant so quickly?’ On day one it has launched, as its first piece of government business, an attack on parliamentary democracy. The opposition is strongly committed to the integrity of the parliament and we support its functions and its primacy in our democracy. We believe in accountability and transparency, but that is not what this government motion is all about. There is a very apt description of this government motion. It is a stunt designed by the Prime Minister to generate a media headline and to give a false impression of activity and accountability. At first blush the public would believe that the proposal to sit on Fridays was the act of a new government putting its stamp on the parliament. However, the attendant publicity generated by the Prime Minister was that members would at last be working a five-day week, for the first time since Federation—a cheap shot at all parliamentarians as if this is the first time any of us have ever worked a five-day week. This was a slur not just on the Liberals and the Nationals but also on the Labor members and the Independents. The inference that underpinned the Prime Minister’s slur on the reputations of all of us is that we all travel home on Thursday nights and then we have a long weekend every weekend. That is borne out by the reaction, the feedback, to the publicity that the Prime Minister generated through various news sites with members of the public deriding what they had been told was a four-day sitting schedule before we slacked off.

The Prime Minister knows full well that we go back to our electorates on Thursday nights to deal with the demands of and assist our constituents. In fact, most of us on both sides of the House have a full day of constituent meetings on Fridays. The Prime Minister obviously thought that his colleagues were a soft target. Because the public love nothing better than a bit of pollie bashing, he deliberately set out to perpetuate the myth that parliamentarians on both sides of the House are lazy and have never done a decent week’s work. We are left to conclude that either the Prime Minister set out to mislead the Australian public or he is judging others by his own standards. If the Prime Minister has taken all his Fridays off, that is a matter for him. But he would know very well that the vast majority of this parliament, of his colleagues on both sides of the House, work very hard for six or seven days a week and rarely get a full day off once a week. But the last thing that any parliamentarian needs is for the Prime Minister of this country to cast aspersions on his hardworking and dedicated colleagues.

There are many misconceptions about parliamentarians and the nature of our work, and the last thing we need is for the Prime Minister to reinforce those misconceptions and the cynicism there is about those who occupy public office. However, this exercise has been illuminating. It has provided us with an insight into the modus operandi of the Rudd government. Mark Latham, in his infamous diary, said that this Prime Minister is ‘addicted to the media’. His assessment is brutally accurate in this instance. The Prime Minister fed his media addiction with a headline that the new government will ‘force MPs to finally capitulate to a full working week’. The Prime Minister knows that most of us work every day of every week and most weekends, and many people struggle to find time to spend with their family and friends. He knows that his colleagues work hard, but the allure of a cheap headline was just too much for him.

Today, through this motion, the Rudd government has revealed its true nature. We see a government and a Prime Minister focused on the five-second grab, the empty rhetoric and the cheap stunt—a government that is more interested in an easy headline than in the hard work of government. The Prime Minister’s cliches and slogans are fast becoming the stuff of legend, yet beneath the veneer of the slogans what do we find? We find, on the one hand, an education revolution that is nothing but a laptop delivered to high school students and, on the other, his cutting of $1 billion in funding from primary schools through the abolition of the Investing in Our Schools Program and his empty promise to solve the skills shortage by providing every school with a lathe and a microwave while simultaneously abolishing the highly successful Australian technical colleges that provide secondary students with specialist technical training.

This week we had the Prime Minister’s crocodile tears about standards in literacy and numeracy, which coincided with his announcement that the government will abolish a $500 million tutorial program to assist struggling schoolchildren with literacy and numeracy. This is the Prime Minister who promised before the election to reduce the price of groceries and the price of petrol but who now says that he has no control over these things. This is the Prime Minister who railed on about infrastructure bottlenecks but who has asked for an urgent report to be on his desk in 2009—

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am just getting to the AWAs bit; I am getting to that bit.

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order on the point of relevance. This is a debate about the standing orders. We are prepared to be here all night, if we want to have a discussion about the government, the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition, but there is a minor point of relevance here to which I would draw your attention.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This has been a wide-ranging debate.

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is the Prime Minister who railed on about infrastructure bottlenecks and who has asked for an urgent report to be on his desk in 2009. One of his staff, in a moment of honesty, admitted this week that the Prime Minister’s 2020 talkfest of 1,000 people was not expected to come up with anything; it was simply designed to ‘give the impression’ that the government had long-term plans. This motion is all about giving an impression: the parliament is sitting on Fridays because the government has so much business to do.

We enter parliament in the knowledge that we are required to represent our constituents during sitting weeks, but this Prime Minister’s insatiable hunger for newspaper headlines has significantly increased the pressure on all members. While headlines are easy, I note that the Prime Minister has left it to the Leader of the House, the member for Grayndler, to clean up this mess—and now we know we are in trouble. The opposition will be here whenever the parliament is scheduled to sit, but this frantic scrambling to change the standing orders reveals that this decision was made without consultation, without any thought for the consequences and without any regard for the workings of the parliament—and, I suggest, without due regard to the legal and the constitutional implications.

The worst aspect of this proposal is that the Prime Minister of this country will refuse to attend question time on what will be a regular scheduled sitting day and neither will he answer a matter of public importance on a regular scheduled sitting day. His soaring rhetoric about higher standards of accountability has come crashing back to earth, deflated by the reality of this action. The government seeks to be very cunning in reducing the opportunities for scrutiny and accountability: it has provided itself with more time for government business early in the week so that government members can ‘shoot through’, according to the new member for Leichhardt—

Government Member:

Don’t verbal him.

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You would like the quote? I am sorry; I did not realise that you did not have the quote. It was in the Australian on 11 February 2008. The member for Leichhardt says that they are going to ‘shoot through’ on Thursday night and head home while shifting time for members of the opposition to Fridays.

The time for private members’ business has now been downgraded to the point where it is in danger of irrelevance, which is no doubt the real motivation of the government as it tries to clean up this mess. Private members’ business on Friday will be prevented from having a division or, indeed, a quorum. Does this mean that, if one member wishes to speak on a Friday, every other member can leave the building? Does this mean that the $1 million that it costs to keep this place operating on a Friday will be for one person? The Prime Minister’s whim has added to that operating cost simply because of his thirst for another cheap headline.

The answer to the question is in fact in the House of Representatives Practice. At the commencement of each sitting day, the Speaker takes the chair. If a quorum, currently one-fifth of members, is not present, the bells are rung for five minutes and if a quorum is not present after the bills have been rung, the Speaker adjourns the House until the next sitting day. The member for Chifley says, ‘Don’t worry; we’ll have 30 people here at the commencement of Friday sitting days.’ That raises a concern which is troubling my legal mind. I ask the Leader of the House to answer this question: if a quorum is called on a Friday morning and then deferred—

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a serious question. If a quorum is called on Friday morning and then deferred to the end of the day, what is the position of parliamentary privilege throughout that day? How is parliamentary privilege affected? Are the proceedings of that Friday covered by parliamentary privilege? I see the Leader of the House shaking his head. I assume that the government has sought legal advice on this issue because it will affect the workings of this parliament and the standing of each member of this House. I invite the Leader of the House to assure all members that the issue of the status of parliamentary privilege has been the subject of legal advice.

One of this Prime Minister’s first acts has been to make it harder for members to achieve a work-life balance during the sitting schedule. While the Prime Minister clearly has no concern for his parliamentary colleagues and is willing to sacrifice their time on the altar of his insatiable quest for media attention, he should display some compassion for the families of members. The Prime Minister spent the last 12 months using the phrase ‘working families’. He should think about the partners, children and extended family members patiently waiting at home. These people are the real losers from this farcical arrangement. However, if we are to work a five-day parliamentary week, that is fine, I will be here. But it must be a full and proper working parliament for those five days. That is why I support the amendments moved by the Manager of Opposition Business that Friday be a proper scheduled sitting day with a question time, with a matter of public importance and with the Prime Minister and all his ministry present. The issue of parliamentary privilege will not then arise.

Respect for the institution of the parliament dictates that the government should not treat sitting days as the plaything of the Prime Minister. This should not be used as a basis for an attack on the reputation of members. Friday sittings must be full working days with divisions, quorums, a question time and an MPI. Anything less is a part-time parliament. The opposition will be the guardian of accountability. We will check the excesses and the arrogance of the executive. I challenge the government to put its money where its mouth is and support the opposition amendments. Otherwise, may the government be condemned for voting down amendments to have ministers and the Prime Minister attend a question time and have a matter of public importance on a scheduled sitting day. Try and explain that one in a five-second grab.

Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker Burke, in the spirit of the occasion, let me offer my personal congratulations to you and invite you to convey to the Speaker formally my congratulations, which I have already conveyed to him informally. I have had the opportunity over some time of viewing many changes in relation to parliamentary procedure. I have not been encouraged to get into the debate about these matters which go to mere manner and form. But, on this occasion, I think there are some important issues that confront us because they involve systemic changes, if I might put it in that form, to the system of rules under which this parliament operates.

It is interesting, as the Leader of the Opposition drew attention to earlier, that these amendments sit uncomfortably, in my view, with the comments made by the Governor-General on behalf of the government in the speech that His Excellency made at the opening of this the 42nd Parliament. He said that this government is going to trade on implementing measures to help make government more accessible, more transparent in its decision making. If you go further in the speech, and it is line after line, the government has stated its preparedness to listen to the ideas of Australians for the future of our country. It wants to leave no stone unturned to ensure Australia is on the right track for the future, and that means listening to Australians, according to the Governor-General. If you were in any doubt when you got to the conclusion, he goes on to say that the government is committed to being a government that listens to the Australian people, consults with the Australian people and is up front with the Australian people. But when it comes to this parliament, where the Australian people elect members to sit and to speak for them, of course what we have are proposals to constrain that effectiveness, that accountability, that transparency. One can be forgiven for coming to a view that what is proposed here is a systemic change to ensure that there is, in fact, less opportunity for accountability.

I know during the debate Mr Burke, the member for Watson, was saying, ‘We’ve still got three MPIs a week and we’ve got four question times a week; really there’s nothing to worry about,’ but in fact, if you were trying to put in place extra days of sitting within the existing framework, we would of course be sitting for extra weeks. That is the reality. His argument was illusionary, in my view, and it is an argument that has been pursued in other ways. People have taken particular examples and said that at other points in time during our parliament we have seen MPIs suspended. That has happened, but the context has usually been when there has been another debate in another form—namely, the suspension of standing orders to move a censure of the government. And it would not be surprising if, when you had had the opportunity to debate for three hours the censure of a government, you came to the view that you did not need the extra opportunity for an MPI. That has happened quite frequently, as the member for Kooyong has noted.

But, equally, when it comes to issues where you may have a quorum or a division and you have agreement in large part between the government and the opposition that you will not call a division when somebody is having a meal, that may provide a basis for suspension of, largely, the whole of a sitting. As I have listened to this debate tonight, my real concern has been that these proposals, which do envisage that the parliament will continue to sit without a question time and without the opportunity to discuss a matter of public importance—and people will be required to be here to maintain a quorum, at least at the start of the day—will mean that ministers will be slipping away. I have heard that ministers will be slipping away. I have heard suggestions that ministers will in fact be sitting in their rooms.

Petro Georgiou (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Quietly!

Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Quietly, yes—I imagine they would be quiet. They would perhaps be seeing their officials and reading their briefs with half an ear to what is going on in the chamber, but I suspect in fact they would be doing something else.

Interestingly, I was asked whether I would be at a function in Sydney next Thursday night. I had to say, ‘No, the parliament’s sitting on Friday; I’m going to have to stay in Canberra.’ They said, ‘Why is it that the minister is able to come and you can’t?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What did you used to do? You never went to functions during the week!

Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Very rarely.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a minister.

Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a minister, very rarely. In relation to matters where some ministers might have to absent themselves, that is understood, but I suspect that what we are seeing here is the emergence of a double standard.

I want to pick up the comments that were made by the member for Wentworth as well as the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, because I have some concerns about the way in which issues relating to quorums are going to be addressed. The member for Wentworth raised the provision of the Constitution, section 39, which goes to the requirement of the parliament to have a quorum. It provides that the parliament might vary the quorum, and we have already done that, but I do not think such a provision envisages that there should be no quorum and I do not think it envisages that the parliament should essentially bring itself to the point where a provision of the Constitution is without any impact, without any effect. My concern is that I do not know what view a court might hold. I imagine you might be able to get a legal opinion. You might not want to show us the legal opinion, but I imagine any self-respecting legal opinion would be, ‘This is a matter in which I’ve formed a view as to what might happen but we won’t know until the matter is the subject of some determination.’ I have seen plenty of opinions like that, because people are usually fairly guarded, fairly cautious. They usually do not offer a black-and-white answer in relation to those matters because you cannot give one until you know there is a determination.

The real concern one has is that, if this were happening in relation to legislation, the matter might well be challenged. Somebody might be concerned about some legislation that this parliament has enacted and want to see it struck down. I could imagine if you were dealing with a situation where there was legislation whose passage was in doubt, you would be very concerned. I suppose some people are taking the view that, with private members’ matters, grievance debates and parliamentary committee reports, there are less likely to be issues that may be the subject of a challenge. But the Deputy Leader of the Opposition correctly raises the issue—in relation to grievance, for instance—that somebody may raise a matter that concerns an individual who thinks that it goes to his or her reputation and a challenge may go to the very question of whether or not the person was protected and was sitting in a parliament to which privilege attached.

The member for Grayndler pooh-poohs this idea. He says it would not arise. I can say quite truthfully that in my personal experience, if people feel very strongly about an issue, they might well seek to test that very question. If they are testing a variety of questions as to whether they have been defamed, why wouldn’t they want to see tested properly the lawfulness of a defence that says these comments were protected? It seems to me that you have to establish first that at the start of the meeting—I think it is standing order 54—there is a quorum, and that means that 30 members have to be present. The government are going to have to ensure that 30 members are present. They are going to look pretty silly if they cannot ensure 30 members are present on Friday to support the sitting.

Then we go on and we look at the particular provisions that will operate under paragraph 55, about when there might be a lack of a quorum. Under proposal (c) it says:

On Fridays, if any Member draws the attention of the Speaker to the state of the House, the Speaker shall announce that he or she will count the House following the conclusion of the grievance debate, if the Member then so desires.

What an extraordinary proposition. If somebody calls for a quorum, it cannot be counted immediately. It must be counted at the end of the day, at the very point in time when more people may have vacated the premises. You can imagine what those wanting to get back to Perth and some of the more outlying places, who have got their grievance up and have spoken on their private members’ business, will do. They will decamp. There is no requirement for them to be here. So we might get to the end of the day with the Leader of the House and a couple of his cronies keeping watch; they will do the count and say, ‘Oh, we have got a count of three.’ What does that tell you? It tells you that after the first test of this issue at the beginning of the day, at some point in time—particularly when attention was called to the state of the House—you could not establish that there was a quorum present.

If I were participating in those debates, with the potential for doubt as to whether or not privilege would pertain, it would constrain me very significantly in what I might be prepared to say. It could certainly have the import of ensuring that my effectiveness as a member of parliament was very significantly impaired. If some of my colleagues from Western Australia—I know they are enthusiastically following this debate—had some issues that they wanted to raise in relation to some of those matters that are being investigated by a state corruption body and they wanted to talk to some of those issues in the House where they felt that something was not being adequately addressed, they might be a little concerned.

When I was a young solicitor, my master solicitor used to say to me in relation to these issues when they arose that you should always look at these questions with ‘more abundant caution’. While I would not want to give a legal opinion on the lawfulness of these matters and the impact that it might have on parliamentary privilege, I would urge anyone who is examining these questions to exercise ‘more abundant caution’. In fact, I would encourage the Leader of the House to have those issues looked at. I think he should give an assurance that he will get legal advice for members so that they can be satisfied that they are going to be properly protected.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So they can defame people?

Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am suggesting that sometimes there are very serious issues that have to be raised. The Leader of the House would not want to talk about defaming people in this House and using parliamentary privilege for the purpose of raising those issues. At various times, I have been the subject of some allegations of that sort by people like you and some of your colleagues. That is the point that I would make. (Time expired)

Petro Georgiou (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker Burke, I first of all congratulate you on your election. I am sure you will do a fantastic job. As I was sitting here listening to some really empty rhetoric from the government, I thought to myself: how did a day that started so well, with a fantastic welcome to country ceremony that ignited everyone’s enthusiasm and that the government, I believe, was complimented on, end with such acrimony and empty rhetoric from the government side? The reason is transparent. What the government have done is create a huge mess that they cannot even defend themselves against. What they have done is try to construct a day in parliament without quorums, without divisions—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Petro Georgiou (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

no, this is a very serious matter—where people do not have to attend the parliament, where apparently one starting quorum is enough, where there is no question time and there is no MPI. Can you imagine if the Howard government in its worst moments tried to do that to the then opposition—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Petro Georgiou (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We can all judge. When Paul Keating said, ‘Question time is a courtesy extended to the House by the executive branch of government,’ he was vilified, and subsequently people said that this was a real sign of arrogance. I think people have to rethink that, because what we have now is a real sign of arrogance, if it is not just a total misunderstanding of the impact of what has been proposed.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Albanese interjecting

Petro Georgiou (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker, the Leader of the House is being just a little loud.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The people at the table are being a bit too loud. The member should be heard in silence.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are bored.

Petro Georgiou (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Be bored in silence. It is just astonishing that the government is trying to knock off MPIs, question times, quorums and divisions. You call that a parliamentary day! There is a real issue, as has been raised, about the constitutionality of not being able to have quorums. There is a real question about whether in fact the House will be in session. We are assured that it will be. We ask for the legal opinions; they are not forthcoming. Firstly, I would like to see the legal opinions because I think all of us are at risk if it is found that the House is not sitting with its full functions.

Secondly, I believe there are genuine issues about the ability of members to service their electorates if they are forced to be in Canberra on Fridays. It is not that significant for some members who live nearby—Sydney, Melbourne. It is very significant for people from Western Australia. It is significant for people from the Northern Territory, and I think that needs to be taken into consideration.

I think that there is a real issue regarding the impact of this on private members’ business. The great argument has been put by the Leader of the House—and I congratulate him on his elevation—that somehow this is no different from what happened in the past during private members’ business: that there were no suspensions, no divisions, no quorums. Let me seek to make the Leader of the House remember the suspension of standing orders moved on 16 February 2005. Mr Albanese moved:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent order of the day No. 6, private members’ business, relating to the Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change (Kyoto Protocol Ratification) Bill 2005, being called on forthwith ...

There was a suspension in private members’ business, a suspension of standing and sessional orders moved. Mr Windsor—this particularly impacts on the Independents—moved:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for New England from moving the following motion immediately:That this House:

(1)

bring forward the debate on the Private Members’ bill—Fuel Quality Standards (Ethanol content) Amendment Bill 2005;

There was a division. Let me just go to another one: Mr SF Smith moved:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent private Members’ business Notice No. 3 standing in the name of the Honourable Member for Perth being called on and debated ...

We have always had suspensions of standing orders in the context of private members’ bills. I think that this is of fundamental importance not just because the Leader of the House misinformed the House about the practice but because I believe it goes to the heart of the rights and abilities of backbench members, private members, to pursue their interests. Let us face it: the characteristic move of the eighties, nineties and into the 2000s was the progressive encroachment of party discipline on the ability of private members to pursue issues. What this does is further undermine the ability of private members to pursue matters—

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Snowdon interjecting

Petro Georgiou (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

listen—which are of fundamental importance to them and which are sometimes of fundamental significance for issues of conscience.

The Labor Party talk a lot about conscience but their party rules prevent them from pursuing it, so constantly we are confronted by calls of conscience on this side of the House, which of course is not something the Labor Party can subject themselves to. But let me just mention three subjects which were pursued by way of private members’ bills during the recent past: the ratification of the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gas emissions, the quashing of the Northern Territory’s power to legislate with respect to euthanasia, and the bill on mandatory sentencing also affecting the Northern Territory. The last of these was of course moved at the initiative of the then member for Calare, the late Mr Andren. I take this opportunity to reiterate the great respect I have for Mr Andren, a respect which I know is shared by members on both sides of the House.

At that particular time, the member for Calare brought forward a private member’s bill which was called the bill to overturn mandatory sentencing in the Northern Territory. This caused a significant degree of interest on both sides of the parliament. As a result of discussions within the coalition party room, which were subsequently made public, a suspension was moved allowing Mr Andren to debate the suspension of standing orders on the bill. As a consequence of that, the government made very significant amendments to its position on the mandatory sentencing of children in the Northern Territory—and, to be fair, that meant the mandatory sentencing of Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory. Without the ability to support a suspension, which will be precluded by the sorts of changes that are being offered up by the government, this sort of thing would simply not be possible. Did the Chief Government Whip recognise this when he was drafting these? Did he recognise that it would be impossible for a person to move a motion and then to move a suspension of standing orders to have a debate on the issue? No. If he realised that, then it is not merely messy but culpable. I do not know how this was conceived, but the reality is that it cuts to the heart of the ability of private members to pursue issues, an ability which has already been truncated for decades in the Labor Party by its party rules and by the evolution towards greater and greater party discipline on our side of the House.

I think it is also important to raise another matter. There has been a lot of talk about consultation and the ugly things that the former Leader of the House did to the poor old opposition, but let me say that the major changes that were moved in 2004 to the standing orders were actually done by consensus, as was the move not to have divisions or quorums between 6.30 and eight. This was done by consensus. This was a major change, not a one-off change.

Arch Bevis (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We were being reasonable.

Petro Georgiou (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, and now you are being unreasonable. So what has changed? What has changed is that I think you have lost sight of something that governments sometimes do lose sight of: the fact that there is a significance to the House that transcends momentary partisan interests. What you have done is to create a mess. I urgently request that you stop, that members of the government, on whom this will impact—it is not just us—stop. It will particularly impact on the Independents and it will impact on private members on this side of the House, but—do not frighten yourselves—it will actually impact on you as well, because it will lead to a degradation of the standards in this House. Just before concluding, I would like to say that I would like to believe that this was somebody’s smart idea that was not thought through, and that the government was willing to reconsider this.

(Quorum formed)

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Urban Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for O’Connor for producing an audience. This debate and these motions are about two things. Firstly, they are about the attempt to provide the impression of activity, which is the hallmark of the government’s early months. Let me be absolutely clear that the early months, the first 100 days, of this government have not been about activity but about the impression of activity. Let me run through the details. First, let us talk about the promises they have breached so far, all designed to give the impression of activity.

On 18 November, Mr Rudd made a little promise to the people of Australia. He said that this House would be recalled before Christmas. Strangely, it never happened. Nobody asked him to make the promise. Nobody compelled him. It was a self-inflicted wound. It was a promise which he did not intend to keep. He made it to the Australian people in the last week before an election. It was a gross violation of trust, but it was designed to give the impression of activity. And guess what? This House did not start until today. And why is that?

When there was nothing preventing the House being called last week or the week before that, what we saw was a House that started later than in 2007, later than in 2006, later than in 2005, later than in 2004, later than in 2003, and the list goes on. So the promise made to the Australian people was: ‘I will get the parliament to work before Christmas,’ but it never happened. Why is it, I ask the members of the government, that their leader promises this to the Australian people and does not deliver? And why did he not even call parliament earlier than we have been brought back?

The second of the promises was on 29 November. What we saw on 29 November was again a unilateral promise to the Australian people that there would be no holidays but for Christmas Day and Boxing Day. I note something very simple: the transcript which makes that statement, as of this evening, has been taken off the Prime Minister’s own website. I checked it before coming into this House. The promise has been taken off the Prime Minister’s own website. I would be delighted if perhaps the Prime Minister’s parliamentary secretary could indicate why this transcript has been taken off the website and whether this practice of expunging history will be a practice taken forward from this day forward. Where is the transcript of 29 November with the Prime Minister’s promise—unasked for by anyone else—that ministers would work on all days other than Christmas and Boxing Day? Because we know that between 21 December and 14 January there is not a single transcript from the Prime Minister on his website. Nobody asked him to make this promise—but, again, it was the impression of activity which he sought to cultivate, whilst not living up to it. Who is happy with the fact that their Prime Minister makes a promise, when not sought by anyone else, and does not live up to it? That is the second example of the impression of activity.

The third is that on 19 September his Minister for Foreign Affairs and his Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts made the promise on his behalf to the Australian people that they would send the Oceanic Viking out to sea within days. Nothing happened. When Christmas came, the ship was still in port in Fremantle. When New Year came, the ship was still in port in Fremantle. When the first week of January came, the ship was still in port in Fremantle. And when the second week of January came, the ship was still in port in Fremantle. All this adds up to a pattern of deception and a process of providing an impression of activity.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. It is a bit belated but it is about relevance: I am wondering what ships have got to do with the matter that is before the chamber.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Minister. This has been a wide-ranging debate. I call the member for Flinders.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Urban Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. The activity of 18 November, 29 November and 19 December represents promises to the Australian people, not one of which was carried through, and all of which were based on the notion of creating an impression of activity when in fact there was no substantive action. The promise of parliament before Christmas, the promise of no holidays and the promise of the ship at sea within days all were broken. They have led to precisely this point and precisely this moment. What we see with these changes to the standing orders and to the way in which the parliament works is the same pattern of attempting to establish the impression of activity whilst at the same time undermining accountability—and that is a serious action. This may be the first government in Australian history that, upon entering the treasury bench, has actually sought to decrease rather than to strengthen accountability. That is the sum total and the net effect of that which is being proposed by the Leader of the House on the floor of this chamber.

What are the elements of parliamentary accountability about which we have serious concern? The starting point is that we do not care if we work on Friday, Saturday, Sunday or public holidays. What we care about is a part-time parliament in which accountability is decreased. I want to deal with that in three ways. Firstly, let me deal with the question of the number of question times. Last year, 70 question times were set down on the record. Of course, an election intervened, but we were willing to face 70 question times. This year, under this new, bold system, we find a reduction in the number of question times. More significantly than that, though, is that this House will operate under a set of rules which provide a considerable danger to the protections of members and of the public, upon which this House has been based for over 100 years. I want to put a different argument to that which I think anyone else has run this evening, and that is the question of protection of the public. One of the reasons the standing orders allow for divisions and for the Speaker of the day to make rulings to cut off a speaker is that, otherwise, if a member of this parliament—and let us not make assumptions that it will be somebody from one side or the other—as has happened in the past, were to unfairly traduce a member of the public and to make a serious accusation in violation of the conventions and the rules which have been set down to protect the public, there would be no protection and no recourse. Members on the government bench know this.

Forget the members of this House. This opens up a new and dangerous situation where the very protections laid out in this House to accompany the freedoms that members have will be lost to the members of the public. There is a balance here. The members of this House have the freedom of parliamentary privilege but, on the other hand, they are subject to the disciplines of the Speaker, and the Speaker’s ability to enforce those disciplines is utterly dependent upon the capacity to evict people from the House, to do so according to the laws of this House and to do so in such a way that there will be divisions to enforce those laws. So we have a very dangerous precedent here where, for the first time ever, members of this parliament will not be subject to a corresponding protection for members of the public, and that, I think, is a profound new direction. Is that what we stand for—the untrammelled right of a member to in some way traduce a member of the public? We stand here as their representatives but we do not stand here with an untrammelled power. It is not an intended consequence of that which has been proposed by our friends on the government benches, but it is an absolute and clear consequence that there are no protections for the public, and that is something fresh, new, unprecedented, not within the spirit of this parliament and not within our obligations to the people of Australia. If there is one member on the other side who believes that we should have an untrammelled right—because that is what we are creating today—to traduce members of the public, then speak up, because a new and dangerous precedent is being established.

Let me move on to another myth—that is, this notion that private members’ business is a time during which there may not be the need for some other form of division which would allow the opposition to move a suspension of standing orders. As the previous speaker, the member for Kooyong, noted, there have been many examples where the previous opposition interrupted private members’ business to seek a suspension of standing orders to bring to the parliament and the people of Australia items that they thought were of extreme gravitas, of moment, of imminence and of importance. I am not sure whether they were or were not, but I believe in their right to have done so. But that right will not exist on Fridays. That right will not exist during private members’ business.

We all know that the goal here is actually very simple. The goal is, firstly, to give the impression of activity and back it up by taking away accountability at precisely the same time. The truth is—and here is the second great political objective—that it is about keeping opposition backbenchers out of their electorates whilst letting government members travel and work in opposition members’ seats at precisely the same time. If this were a serious proposal for something other than a part-time parliament with no protections for ordinary members of the public then we would have a commitment from our friends on the government benches that their ministers and frontbenchers would attend the parliament every day it is set down, other than under extraordinary circumstances. If they give a guarantee to that effect then I am happy to withdraw that complaint. But I do not think there will be any guarantee. In fact, what was previously a parliamentary day has only today been termed ‘backbenchers’ day’. We have lost the notion that this is a parliamentary day. It has become something less because people will flee and the ministers will not be here.

I started this discussion by talking about the concerted impression of activity and by placing these changes to the standing order in that context. We have seen, firstly, at the political level, the deception of 18 November, when it was promised that the parliament would be back before Christmas.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What?

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Urban Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On 18 November your learned leader promised that this parliament would be back before Christmas. It was his promise, it was not sought by any of us, and he breached it. On 29 November there was a promise that there would be no holidays. There is no problem with people doing that, but not if you lie about it, not if you tell the Australian people that there will be no holidays—

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The honourable member will assist the conduct of business if he withdraws that remark.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Urban Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was of course a hypothetical—

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Albanese interjecting

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The Leader of the House will sit down and the honourable member will withdraw.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Urban Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I withdraw. The third promise was on 19 December. Again, there was a promise of activity by sending the Oceanic Viking out within days. None of that happened. But what we do see is a continuation of those public statements in this forum, in this House whereby the government seeks to promote the impression of activity. Under the impression of activity, we have a decrease in question time, a decrease in protection for the public and, above all else, a concerted decrease in the accountability of this place. For that, I stand in support of the position put forward by the member for North Sydney and reject those propositions put forward by the government.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, on a point of order: as Leader of the House I have had an inquiry as to what time the staff of the parliament could be expected to stay here. We do not care particularly, but you might show some courtesy towards the workers who keep the parliament going by letting them know.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order. The Leader of the House will resume his seat.

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, may I first congratulate you on your elevation to the speakership. I have always been an admirer of your fairness and justice—and I will undertake to sing Danny Boy at the first Bundaberg Rum night! Having put that to one side, I want to talk about a very important thing tonight, and that is these Friday sittings. The government has argued that there is nothing unusual about this because at present we suspend divisions between 6.30 pm and 8 pm in the early part of the week for the dinner break. The point I would make there is that that was consensual. That was on for a short time and it was by consensus. If someone did feel aggrieved, at an absolute maximum the longest it would take to have that matter rectified or tested on the floor of the parliament was 1½ hours. Then we were told the other thing that, in the second chamber, we do not have divisions and that this somehow justifies the Friday scenario that the government is putting to us. The second chamber was put in place, again consensually, to facilitate other opportunities to see minor and non-controversial legislation debated by those who want it. If there was a serious dispute in that chamber, it was referred to this chamber at the earliest opportunity and dealt with.

These are not good analogies, and the government are skating on very thin ice by using them as precedents. The government also use as a form of justification that our party, when in government, cancelled a number of MPIs. What they did not tell the House, and especially the new Labor members, was that, on those days, there was another form of debate, generally a censure, which gave the government of the day, in many instances, the opportunity to debate the very same question. After at least 35 to 40 minutes of that, was it necessary to have an MPI, probably on the same matter, immediately following? No, it was not. So that is a third analogy that lacks validity.

If you were really fair dinkum about this, why would you not have the members’ day on Thursday? If it is true that all your ministers are going to be sitting quietly in their offices on Friday—a claim, I might add, that I am cynical enough to believe will not happen—why not reverse the days, and why not sit the parliament on the Thursday till 8 pm and finish it, say, with a question time at midday or with an MPI at one o’clock on the Friday? Why not do that?

If you were really fair dinkum about ministers being in their offices and the backbenchers—particularly opposition backbenchers—not being exploited, then I challenge you: what possible objection would you have to a Thursday, if you are not happy with a Monday? If you want to be truthful, in talking about the number of question times, why would you not have one on that day? If you are talking about MPIs in the context of five days of sitting, and three out of four days was valid under the old arrangements, why would four out of five days not be valid under the new arrangements? We have generally conceded in the past that it is not necessary to have an MPI on a day when private members’ business is the dominant matter because in theory question time, though it has not always been so since the introduction of the Dorothy Dixer, was the time for members, including backbenchers, to test the government. On every ground this lacks any substance.

Let me give you the practical example of what happens in electorates. I, for one, take the matter of being back in my electorate on Friday very seriously. I cannot get home on Thursday night, so I am up at half past four to get the very first plane to Brisbane on a Friday morning to get home to my electorate by about 9.30. When daylight saving is off, I cannot make that connection. It is bad enough then that I do not get back to my office till about midday, but if you translate that scenario to a sitting Friday I will not get home till probably mid-morning on a Saturday. So what happens to a member like me who cannot get home on the Friday night? You go to your electorate on Friday, you get home late morning or midday on Saturday and on Sunday at 10 past 10 you get on the plane to come back to Canberra. Is that a proper use of the government’s or the parliament’s resources? What do you have time to do? Unless there were a really important function in your electorate at some time in the afternoon or the evening of Saturday, what purpose would there be in going home? Do you go and spend a couple of thousands of dollars of the ratepayers’ money going home to do your washing? That is the effect of this motion. You would be going home to do little more than your washing. It is all right for members who can get home on the night or in the late afternoon of the day when the parliament adjourns.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You can stay!

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I see the Leader of the House over there, having a bit of a chiack at me, making a few smart-arse remarks.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The honourable member will withdraw.

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A few smart alec remarks, Mr Speaker.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And he will be very careful.

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And he is sitting on the back bench, out of his place, while he is doing it, I might add. Let me tell you what I saw one day, because, as I said, I take my duties here seriously. I very seldom ask for leave. On one occasion I had to do a representation for a minister on a Thursday evening, and to make the connection I had to go out to Canberra airport around about 4.15. I arrived there at 4.30. There were 20 members of the then opposition in the lounge. If in opposition you were so serious about this matter that you could not stay in the parliament till five o’clock on a Thursday—and you have a new member for Leichhardt who is already talking about shooting through on Friday—what confidence can we have on this side of the House that you are going to treat this matter seriously? We can have no confidence in that whatsoever. Let me be a little more cynical than that. If there is no disciplining ministers to be here, where will they be? Some earlier speakers said that they might be with their families, possibly having a round of golf, having a leisurely Friday in their electorates or VIPing here and there. A more cynical view is that they will be white-anting us in our own electorates.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

God forbid!

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Heaven forbid, says the member for Lingiari, that anyone would come into our electorates. The member for Berowra has just been telling us that he is invited to a function on Thursday night where the minister will be present but that if he is carrying out his duties he will not be able to. Even before you have introduced this measure, even before it has come into this House, you are already breaking the rules yourselves.

Friday is important to me in my electorate. Lots of things happen in my office on a Friday, with people who have not been able to get to me during that week or previous weekend wanting to see me. A week’s work may lead up to that Friday and I may have people wanting to see me. There would be functions to attend. I suppose 30 per cent of the evening functions I attend occur on a Friday night, and on most occasions under these rules I will not be able to get home. As I just put to the House, if I do not get home till Saturday morning is there much point in my going home at all? This measure will, at certain times of the year, confine me to Canberra and not allow me to carry out my duties.

The Prime Minister said that he was going to work the parliament five days per week. Except in the most extreme cases, under all governments of both political persuasions right back to Federation, we have not sat on Fridays. Why? I think that the founding fathers and the pre- and post-war executives of those governments recognised that people have to get back to their electorates and that they work in their electorates. That the Labor Party would try to create the impression that this is somehow making members of parliament work five days a week is, as one previous speaker said, a slur on every backbench member of parliament in this place and on those who have gone before them in previous parliaments. Were they all slackers who should have been lined up at the barrier for a five-day week? Is that what the government is saying? This is an ill-conceived thing that has been very poorly thought through.

I will not go over what we have heard to any great extent, but if you cannot have a quorum—if the quorum ceases to be important—how do you establish the House in the morning? How do you, for example, have a division? You cannot have a division. We all know that some members of parliament have very robust thoughts about matters they bring up as private members’ business. They are matters which do not normally get onto the Notice Paper but which you really want to test in the parliament so that your constituents are aware of an issue in your electorate. As the member for Berowra made very clear, the first thing is that the matter of privilege—until the Leader of the House is kind enough to let us see the legal opinion—is suspect.

Let me put a second scenario to you, Mr Speaker, because you have been the guardian of some of these things. What do we do when one of those robust debates is going on, the Speaker constantly calls a particular member to order, then either sends them out, names them or tells them to resume their seat and someone in the opposition wants to contest that by dissenting from the Speaker’s ruling? What do we do then? This could apply either way. It could be that a Deputy Speaker from the coalition makes a ruling that is quite offensive to the government and there will be no way of testing that ruling. So on every front this thing is flawed.

I have told you of the effects on my electorate and I have told you that there are probably alternatives. I do not mind coming here. The Prime Minister should not create the impression that I mind coming here to do work. I do not mind that one bit. I would be happy to sit for another week or another fortnight and do it in an orderly and proper fashion, as has been the custom for the last 107 years and, under our current practice, for the last 50-odd. Mr Speaker, this matter should be opposed.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Firstly, I congratulate you, Mr Speaker, on your elevation to such high office. Something that has not been mentioned about your good self today has been your passion for the environment and the work that you have done on committees, which I have witnessed very clearly, as well as your passion for future generations to engage in environmental matters and the work that you have put into that. I felt that that was not mentioned today. I would like to raise that with you now. I congratulate you and the Deputy Speaker on your appointment to your positions. I said to you privately today—and I do not mind telling those both in the House and watching on broadcast—that all good things come to those who wait. You have waited, you have been patient and you have come to a place and a time when you have achieved your goal.

I want to go back to when the member for Watson was talking about the opposition. He was talking about passion. He said that the opposition finally has some backbone on this issue. My great disappointment tonight is that we are talking about an issue that the broader Australian public listening to this broadcast could not care less about, and that is what is going on in this House. While they will have understood what the member for Hinkler and other members of the House have said, they will ask why, when tomorrow we are going into a day that is about hope, about the future and about steps towards reconciliation, we would be discussing this matter at length in the House tonight. For me, we have to because we need to be constantly vigilant in everything we do with regard to the freedoms we enjoy. The member for Watson talked about passion. I have three positions that I want to take here. Firstly, this should have had more consideration. It should have gone to a committee and come back with bipartisan support as to how we might approach it. Secondly, I am very happy with five days of full-on parliamentary activity. If that is what you want, bring it on. That was my understanding of what the new Prime Minister put forward to the public of Australia. I was of the understanding and other people were of the understanding that we were just going to sit another day, which would give plenty of time for all of the new backbenchers and all of those within this House to have a greater opportunity to speak. Thirdly, there are problems, and the member for Hinkler came close to them. I say to the new members: I hope you have bucketloads, barrow loads, trailer loads of passion about what you do in this House on behalf of the Australian people. Never, ever misunderstand the important role that you play and what an honour it is to be a member of this House, whatever role you play within it. Whatever job you are given, wherever you are, very few people come to this House, and you are greatly honoured by the constituents who have elected you to this place.

The problem is this. Say on a Friday a recalcitrant, passionate member of parliament decided he was going to be extremely passionate about an issue that somebody on the other side might take issue with. You would end up, unusually in this place, in uproar—and we have seen the former opposition now in government try it week after week when the Speaker was trying to take control of the House. What would be left at the Speaker’s disposal? One option is expulsion for an hour. If the individual recalcitrant member from either side of the House then says, ‘I’m not moving,’ are we going to call on the Serjeant-at-Arms to pull out a shotgun and drive him or her out of this House? I don’t think so! It has never happened before and it will not happen in the time of this parliament. So what is the next thing that you can do? The Speaker can then name that person, and there would be a vote of the House for their removal and a discussion in the course of that debate. But that cannot happen on a Friday: ‘Oh, but we can defer the debate’—so the mayhem goes on in the House for the Friday, which is now called backbench Friday. It is only backbenchers who are causing this mayhem, not frontbenchers. So you have a day of recalcitrance riding over the authority of the Speaker, which can then be tested at the end of the day if there is anybody left to test it. If there is nobody left to test it, it can be held over until the next sitting of parliament three weeks later. Are the members of parliament at that time still as passionate about the issue three weeks later or are we left with a whole lot of people in trouble?

What would actually happen, I believe, is this. Given the intransigence of the room, the Speaker would then, out of disorder in the parliament, call a halt to the proceedings. That is what would happen: it would finish on the spot. If you want to get a bit of notoriety in this place—and don’t do this!—you would cause that mayhem and you would cause the Speaker to call you to account. You would then call the Speaker to account, you would dissent from the Speaker’s ruling and the parliamentary sitting would be closed. You would be on the front page of the local Examiner, or whatever it is, the next day—and you would probably not make it onto the front of anything else because no-one would be bothered.

I have said my piece; we have been asked to say our piece and sit down. I am very happy to say this. If you want to work an extra day, we will be right behind you. We will give you 100 per cent support right now if you give us a reasonable opportunity to have a full day of parliament with all the opportunities that go with that and all of the safeguards that have been put in place by the members who have gone before us in this place who have had wisdom and knowledge and had consideration of these issues. That is why we have the standing orders we have today: those who have gone before us have put them in place so we do not have to go through this type of debate. That is why the standing orders are so important: they come out of a wealth of experience, knowledge and consideration.

Petro Georgiou (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And consensus.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, and I thank the member for Kooyong—and agreement. I draw my remarks to a close right there with the last word I used being ‘agreement’. I started off by saying we should be going off to resolve this matter behind closed doors and not trouble the Australian people with this issue when there are such big issues before the nation and the parliament today on which they want to hear from us. I will leave that for the consideration of the House.

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Leader of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, I take this opportunity to offer my congratulations on your elevation to that new position. I certainly welcome the opportunity to speak on the proposed changes to the standing orders. Tonight we are considering a very important question which goes to the very heart of how this parliament works. I believe that the people of this country have the right to expect that, when this parliament sits, it is a fully functioning parliament that sits each and every day. The people of this country have the right to expect that the executive will be in the parliament when it sits and that the parliament will be accountable to the people each and every day. The people of this country have the right to expect that, when a member raises an issue of concern to their electorate, there are members of the executive present to hear those concerns. We do not want clayton’s sitting days. If this parliament is to sit, it should be fully functional. There should be a question time and the executive should be present. If the House is to sit on a Friday it should not be an optional day. The role of members of this place is to represent their electorates in the House when it sits. At $1 million a day this parliament is not a ‘do drop in’. It is not a matter of choice as to whether or not you bother turning up. When this parliament sits its members should be here. Their constituents should rightfully be able to expect them to be here voicing the concerns of their area and having them heard by the executive.

The announcement by the Leader of the House on 18 December last year was pure doublespeak. He said that for the first time since Federation the parliament will regularly sit five days a week. Any reasonable person would assume that we would have a question time and that the normal functions of the House would continue five days a week. He did not say that the fifth day was, in fact, a clayton’s sitting. He said that the parliament would sit more days, allowing greater accountability and scrutiny. But there is no accountability in a clayton’s sitting day. There is no extra scrutiny in a clayton’s sitting day. He said that the Rudd government was committed to parliamentary reform to ensure greater accountability. If the government were really committed to greater accountability it would welcome the opportunity to respond to the concerns that would be raised in a question time in the House on a Friday. It would welcome the opportunity to state the case of the government as to why the measures it proposed or the responses it made were appropriate. But on a Friday we will not have a question time.

As a member of this House I have frequently noted that it is really important to look at what the Australian Labor Party do and not listen to what they say. To see if their Friday sitting day will be as effective as they claim it will be, you only have to look at what their performance on a Thursday is like. I did a bit of research on Labor’s performance on a Thursday sitting day. I happened to chance on a particular date, which was 20 September last year. There was a division at 4.46 on 20 September last year. Last year in this place there were some 60 members. I thought, ‘How many members of the Australian Labor Party turned up for the division at 4.46 on 20 September 2007?’ With 60 members you would think it was probably reasonable to have 55. There would have been a few away and so on and so forth. It was not 55. You would think that 50 would have been a reasonable number. It was not 50. Was it 45 perhaps? It was not 45. Forty-four members turned up for the division on the Thursday. If roughly one-third are not bothering to turn up for a division on a Thursday, it begs the question: how many people would be bothering to turn up in this place, at a cost of $1 million a day, on a Friday? One-third might be in the Qantas Club lounge or wherever they are when they are on important other business outside of this House. Forty-four out of 60 were here on 20 September last year. If they could not be bothered turning up on a Thursday, how could we reasonably expect them to turn up on a Friday, that clayton’s sitting day?

Members have canvassed a whole range of issues—privilege, accountability, giving the taxpayer value for money and what constituents can rightly expect in the representation that they receive when this House is sitting. I believe that the changes proposed by Labor do not reflect what the public heard when that statement was made. I believe the public heard that they were getting five full sitting days, value for their taxpayers’ money, a question time and a fully functioning parliament—they were not going to be seeing this half-baked proposal that currently stands before us. I commend the amendments proposed by the opposition. I certainly would be very keen to ensure that the government reconsiders the current plan that it has on the table.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The atmosphere in which this debate is taking place is a good example of what we can expect under the current government that has just come into power. I think that what we will be seeing is dictator Rudd, who, while taking the so-called moral high ground, has no concern at all for the wishes of the parliament and no respect for members. He has been elected on the basis of saying he wants more transparency, that he wants to be ‘the reasonable leader’ and that we are going to be sitting more days to have fuller and fairer debate and more accountability, but it is all a facade; it is all a fake. Coming into this parliament today we are told that the most important issue we have to deal with is the apology, when we see the great difficulties that the economy is in. He has chosen this occasion to do so—no matter what is said in this parliament and no matter what support is given—and the nation is still divided.

On the procedural issue before us tonight, what we are seeing is a fundamental breach of the compact that he tried to draw with the Australian people during the election period. The argument is mounted: we are going to sit an extra day, Friday, with no question time, no divisions and no quorums. I think the new member for Leichhardt got the interpretation right when he said:

From what I can gather, there won’t be any question time on Friday, so we will be able to shoot through ...

Shoot through is right. The fact of the matter is that, if there is no question time, it is not a meaningful sitting day.

The proposal has been put forward that the opposition is quite prepared to sit additional days. Indeed, it would welcome that. Perhaps we could sit for an extra two weeks instead of the Fridays. Sitting for 20 weeks would not be a problem. The government is going back to 18 weeks. People want value for money. The Leader of the House, who is sitting at the table, would like to say that there is some argument for saving money by having this curious clayton’s sitting day—the sitting day you are having when you are not having a sitting. If we are going to call the parliament together, the people of Australia want value for money, and value for money is seeing you being accountable during question time.

I was in this chamber when Paul Keating decided that there would be a part-time ministry, when the government would put on only certain ministers on a particular day so that they did not have to be accountable to the questioning of the opposition. The invective that we used to hear from Prime Minister Keating—the invective and the lack of accountability—was what, at the end of the day, led to his being thrown out of office by the Australian people. If the current Prime Minister wants to go down the route, I would say that three years of having him as Prime Minister is going to be too long. I could imagine that we would be looking at an early election. My goodness, if the Australian people see—as no doubt they will—that you are not people of your word, then out you will go.

Let us look at it. You said you wanted to have more accountability, so we are now having a clayton’s sitting day. Question time has been ruled out, which means that your ministers can go into marginal seats in preparation for the next round of elections while our members of parliament will be sitting in this parliament doing what they are paid to do—be here. This is a government that does not stand up to its promises. I think one of the things you said you were going to do was stop interest rates going up: failed. Second, I think you said you were going to stop grocery prices going up: failed. Third, I think you said you were going to stop petrol prices going up: failed. You said you were going to be a more transparent government: failed. So we are not really off to a very good start for you lot.

Then there is the question of constitutionality, going to section 39 of the Constitution. That has been raised by some of my colleagues. The danger is this. Those of you who have been chairs of committees—and committee meetings are deemed to be meetings of the parliament—have always been fastidious about maintaining a quorum during hearings for one reason and one reason only: the wish to maintain privilege for the people giving evidence. If you looked like losing quorum, you would either suspend the hearing or move to a subcommittee if that were possible. The same question lies here in this House. If it were deemed that the quorum provisions, as you are proposing them, meant that privilege was not afforded to members whilst they were speaking, that could only be tested by someone saying something defamatory and it ending up in court with the court determining whether or not that privilege applied. By doing this, you are putting at risk all members of the House.

Personally, as chairman of various committees, I have always taken the precaution that, if I was about to lose quorum, I would either have a motion and move to a subcommittee or suspend the hearings because it was not worth putting those witnesses at risk. I do not believe that it is worth putting the members of this House at risk on the question of privilege. I think, if you are in any way reasonable men, you will consider that very seriously. There are interesting case law precedents already. Things that you say can link you to statements that you have made outside the parliament, and the court can deem that they were sufficiently close to the statements that you had made in the House such that the privilege that is afforded to you is not so afforded for the purposes of that case.

So there are all sorts of areas of difficulties that I think have not been considered. There is also the haste with which things have been dealt with along these sorts of lines. With regard to the apology, the fact that we only saw the text of it in the House late this afternoon and the Australian newspaper had it on its website before we members of the parliament were given a copy is an absolute outrage and shows the contempt in which this government holds the parliament. In other words, this tightly guarded set of words was not given to the members of the parliament; it was given to the press. Yet we had called for those words to be given to us and for the general public to know what was to be debated tomorrow. Again, we are going to breach the conventions that we follow here.

Tomorrow we are going to have two speakers on the apology and then we are going to vote on it. We can all have a debate about it later when it is irrelevant to the passage of that motion, whether or not it is carried. Again there is a contempt for the parliamentary procedures and the proper proceedings of the House. I simply say that this is showing us the contempt that the government holds for the parliament. Whereas we have heard before complaints about the power of the executive and the legislature losing power, this time power is going to be concentrated in the hands of the leader, who is going to be dictatorial in all things in this chamber. This is a fine point for us to make here, to hold the ground and say: if we are going to sit, then there must be a question time. If you want to sit 14 days more then let us sit two weeks more. Let us be fair dinkum about it and not pretend that you are going to work harder or wish to work harder, when all you are offering is a clayton’s sitting date.

Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The motion by the Leader of the House, as all of the speakers on our side have said, was conceived as a stunt and has unravelled as he has prepared the substance of it. As the member for Flinders outlined earlier, from the moment this government won election, it was obvious that it was rushing through the processes without looking at the substance. Within days of the election—in fact, in the week before the election and the week after—the new government was saying the parliament was going to resume before Christmas. That never eventuated. That quietly drifted away. It was an excited announcement made in the wake of an election, without any obvious thought of the practical fact that it takes days and in many cases weeks before many of the seats—and members who are here today—are actually confirmed. The notion that an election on 24 November would allow parliament to sit before Christmas was always ridiculous.

But it was in this vein that the Leader of the House and the Chief Government Whip conceived Friday sittings. In the cheap spin that has been the backbone of so much of the policy announcement of those opposite, it was thought this would be quite a popular move. As the Deputy Leader of the Opposition said, it was to convey the impression that all of a sudden parliament would sit for five days for the first time and parliament would do more work. If parliament is to sit on Fridays—and all of our speakers have said we are happy to sit on Fridays—we do not want a clayton’s sitting day; there has to be a real sitting day with all the mechanisms of parliamentary accountability. The four on the government side who have spoken to this motion have for years defended question time. On the rare occasion that the previous government had a special sitting day to deal with an important issue and there was not a question time, this House heard from the then opposition about what a travesty of justice it was. What they are proposing is to have a sitting day every Friday without question time. That speaks volumes about their approach.

Of course, it will also be a sitting day where a good deal of the parliament is not here—and by that I mean the minister sitting opposite, the minister sitting at the table; I mean the 25 or 30 ministers and parliamentary secretaries sitting opposite on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. But they will not be here on Friday; they will be out of Canberra on Thursday night. So when the government said parliament would sit on Friday it meant parliament with no government ministers would sit on Friday, because there would be no question time and it would be private members’ business only.

The history of the Labor Party on question time is not good. Currently—and we are yet to have one in this parliament, but as of the last series of question times—there are four times more questions being asked than occurred the last time Labor was in government. As the previous speaker outlined, former Prime Minister Keating introduced a roster; but prior to that the number of questions being asked had reduced to 10 in total per day. And now we have 20 per day. Whether that remains we will see. But for the Leader of the House to say that question time cannot be held on a Friday, that question time is not important, is breathtaking hypocrisy. The now Treasurer, the member for Lilley, has a list of quotes on the parliamentary Hansard. From March 2003: ‘Question time is ... parliament’s most powerful weapon’. Again from March 2003:

... why would you compromise the most fundamental cornerstone of parliamentary democracy, the most powerful weapon in the arsenal of accountability, by cancelling question time I do not know. You would only do it if you had something to hide.

That is the current Treasurer and member for Lilley when he was in opposition.

Question time can easily be held on a Friday. Arguments about parliament rising at two or 2.30 do not obviate the fact that question time could be held at 10 or 11 in the morning, which occurred in this parliament many years ago and has occurred, and probably still does occur, in some of our state jurisdictions. But what we are seeing here is a stunt unravelling. It is in the vein of every single parliamentary procedure, that procedure that has occurred, and the Leader of the House has mucked this up. He knows he has. In the first day of the new government, cancelling question time will speak volumes. Those of us on this side of the House will ensure that we do everything we can to get a question time on a Friday. The government’s first step, in removing a question time on Friday, speaks volumes. (Quorum formed)

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Community Services, Indigenous Affairs and the Voluntary Sector) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We saw the headline before Christmas, that for the first time since Federation the parliament will sit for five days a week. It was a cheap headline but it totally defamed the work ethic of members of parliament. What we are seeing today is an outrage being practised on the parliament to protect the smart alec idea of Hawker Britton which was foolishly adopted by the Prime Minister on training wheels and the Leader of the House with L-plates. I utterly reject any suggestion that members of parliament only work when they are in this chamber. We work seven days a week, regardless of whether we are in this chamber or not. But, as is becoming typical from this government, this stunt to justify a headline turns out to be a scam anyway because, while the parliament might be sitting for five days a week, ministers will not be here. The idea that we can have a functioning parliament without ministers is simply shameful.

There are two fundamental errors with what the government is doing. The first is that there was not the slightest semblance of due process. This is a very serious change to the procedures of this House. This is a radical usurpation of the ordinary sitting patterns that this House has followed for a long, long time. This should have been done, if it were to be done, either by recommendation of the Procedure Committee or through negotiation with the opposition. All previous changes to the sitting times of this House that I can recall either were recommendations of the Procedure Committee, which the then government accepted, or were carefully negotiated through with the then opposition. Absolutely nothing of that kind has happened here. So not only have we seen no due process but, as a result of this bodgie process, we have changes to the standing orders put to this parliament which are wrong in substance.

Ministers are paid more because they are supposed to work more. In the thinking of members opposite, ministers are going to get paid more for working less. It is a ridiculous situation which this government is putting before the House. Should this motion be carried, we will see degraded accountability, we will see days of parliamentary sitting without the traditional question time accountability of the executive to the parliament but, worse, we will see degraded private members’ business.

I see a whole swag of new private members sitting in front of me. They have come here full of hope, full of expectation and, above all, desperately anxious to impress their senior colleagues, which is why new members opposite, of all people, should not be supporting the motion that the government has put before the House—because, if you vote for this, no minister will ever see you speak. I am saying to you: do not waste your pearly words on mere backbenchers; make sure ministers are there to listen. The only way ministers will be there to listen is if you support the amendments that the opposition has put forward.

This motion that has been put before the House is a very, very bad start by the Rudd government. This was a party which, prior to the election, talked about raising parliamentary standards. It was a party which actually promised to submit to the Australian people at the election a plan for raising parliamentary standards. Perhaps that is one of the plans that are going to be put before the weekend conference of 1,000 people, so that the government might actually be able to come up with something. This is a very bad start from the Rudd government, a government which runs away from question time, a government which is scared of accountability to the parliament. Every day this parliament sits, every question time this Prime Minister faces, he is going to be reminded of this gross act of political cowardice.

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Most bad mistakes take a while to develop but, by golly, this government has peaked early with this set of motions today. It took 10 long years for the last federal Labor government to become so arrogant that the PM could routinely excuse himself from scheduled parliamentary sittings. Remember the infamous Keating rostered day off? The Keating rostered day off was 10 years in the making from the last federal Labor government. But here, less than 10 hours into the new parliament, the new Labor Prime Minister is so arrogant that he wants to have that same privilege for himself: a Friday RDO—a Friday Rudd day off. There is something fundamentally wrong about this.

The government speakers, one after another, have tried to defend this folly but they have spectacularly failed to justify it in each of those contributions, let alone to defend those empty arguments that have meekly been brought forward by Labor in an attempt to mask what is a horrendously bad idea. Thankfully, the opposition speakers have helped all in this parliament come to terms with just what a rotten idea it is. It has been clearly, concisely, comprehensively evidenced by coalition members; we have illustrated the nonsense of this idea.

I am happy to work on a Friday; I am happy for the parliament to sit on a Friday. But a Labor ‘lite’ parliament on a Friday is not something that anyone in this parliament should subscribe to. Look at the Prime Minister’s words. To the new members I say: cop a load of some of the soaring rhetoric we had from Mr Rudd when he was in opposition. He said on 8 February 2006:

The function of the parliament is to hold the executive accountable. How do we do that? We ask the executive questions.

That sounds like a good idea, but apparently not on a Friday. He then goes further. On 20 September 2007 Mr Rudd again says:

The purpose of the parliament is for the opposition to pose questions to the executive and the purpose of the parliament is to get answers from the executive.

Well, apparently not on a Friday. And it keeps happening: for example, matters of public importance. Those new members should look at the member for Griffith’s contribution on 15 February 2005. It is just magnificent! After being unhappy with the answers he felt he was not getting and then unhappy with the answers he was getting—he said he was not getting any answers that he could feel happy or unhappy about—he launched into a story about how the Howard government had in fact caused the death of Westminster. He said it had caused the death of Westminster, because he was unhappy with the answers he was getting. If there are no questions asked at all, what is that—the cremation of Westminster, achieved by this new government within the first 10 hours that it has been in the parliament? Let me quote what the member for Griffith had to say:

The core element of the Westminster system of government is ministerial accountability to parliament and this House.

Apparently so—just not on a Friday. He said:

The last time I looked, honourable members, the person who answers to this parliament on behalf of the government was called the Prime Minister—not the defence minister, not the foreign minister, but the Prime Minister—and last time I looked he got a pretty big pay cheque. He runs the show; he likes it.  He gets the flash house on Sydney Harbour. He is the core of the accountability system that is supposed to operate in this House.

Alas, not on a Friday. Because he was unhappy with the answers that he was getting, he went on to accuse the former Prime Minister of being ‘someone who increasingly resembles Louis XIV’—remarkable stuff. Even today, for those who were uplifted by your election, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, and that of Mr Jenkins and others—a very special moment—we heard the Prime Minister say that scrutiny is a good thing for all of us, for the speakership and for each of us as members of this parliament and that it adds to our modern democracy—except on a Friday.

So this motion contains quite a remarkable proposition. The Prime Minister went on to talk about robust debates being the heart and soul and the nature of a vibrant Australian democracy—but apparently not on a Friday. I say to those members opposite: what does this mean for you? A grievance debate is an opportunity for you to raise in this parliament something that is burning away in your constituency. The idea is to raise those points in the hope that those with the responsibility and the opportunity to remedy those grievances will do so. What do you do if those responsible are a no-show? What if they are part of the long Labor lunch on a Friday and they are just not here? It is a Labor ‘lite’ parliament on a Friday and no-one is here to hear your eloquent speeches in the grievance debate.

There is some prospect that your private member’s motion might actually be voted upon, but there will be nobody here to take notice of it. To all of you who championed the cause of collective bargaining, where were you when you got ripped off with this proposition? Some of you will have to be here but others will be able to have the long Labor lunch on the Labor ‘lite’ Friday when the parliament is operating with an arm and a leg tied behind its back. Where were you collective bargaining advocates? Our Prime Minister went on to say that ministerial accountability means precisely that: they should be responsible to the parliament for their actions. How you can be responsible and be a no-show on a Friday is beyond me.

I turn to one last point. I know that some members in this House—much to our chagrin—have come a cropper on the ways in which we hold people’s behaviour to account. You can get up to some mischief in here and they will warn you. You can go a little bit further and they may warn you again. But then you might get sin-binned for one hour. The idea behind it is that to be out of this parliament and not representing your constituency for one hour is a great embarrassment to you, as the member. You have diminished the parliament and your constituency by being barred for an hour or, if worse comes to worst and you are named, 24 hours. Where are standards of behaviour going when, before the day even starts on a Friday, you do not have to be here? What does that say about the parliament?

The propositions brought forward by the new Labor government diminish this parliament. Do yourselves a favour: support the opposition’s amendments and restore the interests of the nation, restore the interests of the parliament, look after your own interests and, above all, give collective bargaining a go-on when you are working here.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are quite a few new members sitting in the House. We will find over time that they are more frequently absent, but this is a good opportunity to give them a little bit of advice. The first one is: whatever trick you pull on an opposition, they will pull it on you when their turn comes along. So you go ahead: pull all the tricks and toughen up this place in a way that you think is to your advantage, but do not squeal when it is your turn. Let us get that straight.

Let me talk for a moment to the member for Maribyrnong: confected laughter was a job you had to do in opposition but you are now the government, so look like a government. There is another fact that I want to draw to the attention of the member for Maribyrnong. On his first day in this place, I heard him say, ‘Could it cost $1 million to run this place for a day?’ He did not believe it—and he is shaking his head. I wonder if he knows that, on the last count made to me, 4,000 people work in this place on a sitting day. No-one should know better than him, with his constant visits to the arbitration commission, how much that costs.

It is a funny thing that the Hawke government, the Keating government, the Fraser government and the Howard government all attempted to manage the time of this place to get maximum productivity at minimum cost. I sat here on Fridays under the Hawke government. We used to go from Tuesday through to Friday and then from Monday through to Thursday. We all thought that we would stay over here for the weekend—but that did not work. They backed away from Fridays. Others have sat on Fridays and walked away from doing it. That is fine. We have said clearly that we will sit on Fridays, provided it is a real sitting day, as it used to be in those days. But when it comes to time management—this government preaches to Australians that it is going to be efficient—why have we got these sitting hours? Why do we have private members’ business on a Monday? Why do we have an agreement that private members’ business, which is often not controversial, does not require divisions or quorums? Because the government has its cabinet sitting somewhere trying to organise the future of the country and, typically, the opposition shadow cabinet is doing the same thing. That is maximising the return—private members are in here doing the things that are important to them and their constituents and the senior executives are not having their thoughts disrupted by being called down for divisions.

Also in terms of better management of the House, we always had lunchtime for an hour and a half, and we always had dinnertime for an hour and a half. In this modern environment with TV connections and everything else, someone eventually got smart and said: ‘We can sit through that. But let’s be a bit sensible. If some members are a bit fed up with the food that’s available in this place’—that is an option you will all learn about—‘they might like to go and have a meal out of this House. So let’s be fair. During that meal hour, we will agree between ourselves that we will not call quorums or divisions. In this case we will defer them. If there is a reason for them, we will go on with that procedure when everybody is back in the House.’ That is why we did that. You can count out 1½ hours or three hours a day to the additional productivity delivered in this House, while the lights were on and the airconditioning was at full pelt et cetera. That was smart.

Then we came to the conclusion that maybe we would knock off on Wednesday nights at eight o’clock just to break the pressure a little—we used to go until 11 o’clock, of course. In this place we have always had a four-day sitting week. I stand with the member for Warringah on this: I would not say of one person I have known in this House that they were lazy. You would be very silly to suggest that this is an easy job; it is not. The thing is, we said, ‘The way the flight schedules work, we have to knock off at five o’clock on Thursdays.’ So that is the sitting week. When I look at the proposal before this House and try and apply some efficiency criteria, I find that we are going to work Friday but we are not going to work until nine o’clock on Thursday. The Leader of the National Party has put the right interpretation on that: if you have to work until nine o’clock on Thursday there are no planes after that because of the curfew.

By any measure, if you are fair dinkum about what you are talking about, you should extend the sitting hours on Thursday until nine o’clock. Otherwise, you are perpetrating a fraud. If you want to be efficient and you want to get the hours in, that is how to do it. By the way, while you are about it, if you want to retain private members’ business for the convenience of everybody on Mondays, you could start at nine o’clock not 12 o’clock. No problem. You have the hours and the people should be here. What is more, you could gain an extra two hours on Tuesdays by starting government members’ business at 12 o’clock and running it until question time at two o’clock.

We propose that we will buy Fridays provided they are a full working day. In that case, most people will not get home until Saturday morning—for Western Australians and others we will not get home even then. I can cop that. I have lived that and I know how it works. I know who started it and changed it. The member for Chifley told me all about the committee and said that we opposed the proposal violently. Check the Hansard. You cannot rewrite history in this place. It is all on the record. I made a speech strongly supporting that proposal and I still think it is a good idea. So do not rewrite history in these debates. If you are going to be the government of efficiency, you do not need to turn the air conditioners and heaters up to full strength here on Fridays, because you can get the hours out of the existing sitting week. That would have been smart.

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I love these grins! You put a female there on the front bench and she grins about efficiency—and she is still doing it, and the one next to her is. Don’t be silly. What I am telling you is—

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Talk about a bloke, then.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will talk about you, then, Sid. You have been and gone, and you will probably go again.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am back, and you grow up.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let me tell you this: don’t be silly when you are in government. It is not funny in this House, that is the point, to promote efficiency—

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Don’t pick on gender, mate—just make your point.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am just talking about confected laughter and grinning coming from a government that says it is going to do things better. To save a bit of time, I want to make one other point.

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What’s a female got to do with it?

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Listen, when you start to squeal, I know it is hurting. You bought yourself into this thing and you are not travelling too well. You have not thought about it and, as I said, if you had rung up Bob Hawke—one of your better leaders—he would have said, ‘Fellas, we tried Fridays; it did not work for us.’ You have this funny idea. I just cannot imagine people ceasing work here at five o’clock on a Thursday and then all coming back on Friday morning. You could not make that work at a manufacturing plant or at places like that if people knew there was voluntary attendance.

I am saying to you: get some practical answers or if you want a five-day week we will accommodate it provided each day is a working day and it is nine to nine. I would like to see a simple pledge that everybody signs—and a few of us could even swear on the Bible. In the morning in this place, the ministry could simply sign a pledge—and I would suggest they put a month’s wages on it—that they will always be here on Fridays. Do something positive.

It is obvious that the government is using this as a device. You say you want to save some money: you could achieve those hours within the existing framework and you would save money, be it a million, be it $500,000. The member for Maribyrnong probably earnt more money than that in a year. And he married wisely! The fact of life is that this argument is about efficiency and the efficient management of this parliament. You could achieve all those outcomes in a four-day sitting week. But if you want five days, add a 12-hour shift—no more, no less.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not think that anyone who is being honest in this debate could say anything other than that the Prime Minister has acted here out of the highest of motives. He is a very work oriented sort of person. I am familiar with his work in the state government in Queensland. He is a very, very hard worker and he believes that we should all work harder.

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, the Service Economy and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You mustn’t know him very well, Bob.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am quite sincere in these comments. I think the member for O’Connor’s comment that people who work here work very hard is very true. I am not saying that they always work hard for the good of the people—a lot of the time they work pretty hard for themselves to get re-elected.

Let me come back to the effect of this. I cannot speak for everybody in this House, but I can speak for myself. It is a two-hour drive from Charters Towers to Townsville. If I were in Mount Isa or Cairns, or the Mareeba area, it would be a hell of a lot longer, but let us just take the best option: that I am in Charters Towers. It is two hours to the airport, there is half an hour’s wait time at the airport and then it is two hours to Brisbane, effectively, by the time you get off the aeroplane. There is a 1½-hour wait time for a connection and then it is effectively two hours to Canberra, by the time you get your ports and everything off, and then it is the best part of half an hour by the time you drop off your stuff at the motel and get to your office. So we are talking about nine hours of travel, and that would be true for all of the Western Australians, all of the Territorians and all of the North Queenslanders. So, if we finish on Friday afternoon, all of Saturday is gone. If I stayed overnight in Brisbane, it would be much worse, but I am taking the best option: that somehow I can get straight through in nine hours. That means that all of Saturday is gone, but of course I have to get back here by Monday morning, so I have to leave home on Sunday morning to get back here. That goes on for 23 weeks of the year.

There are a lot of new faces here. I have seen new faces come and go for 34 years in parliament, and I will tell you: those of you who will still be here in four years time are those who are seen all over your electorates. Ron Camm, the great leader of the Country Party in Queensland, used to say, ‘There are no votes for you in Brisbane.’ I am telling you: there are no votes for you in Canberra, so you had better get back to your electorates. If you are not back in your electorates, then you will pay a price for that. Just go through who lost their seats and who retained their seats in the last election. For those on this side of the House, you and I both know: those that worked their electorates are still sitting here; those that did not are not. But you people will not be able to work your electorates because you will be down here in Canberra. I will tell you something else: these blokes on this side of the House are not all drongos. They are going to get leave. They are not going to be here on the Fridays and Mondays. They are going to be working in your electorates to win government back off you. Those are the political implications of what is taking place here.

What is profoundly important to me at this stage of my career is that the politicians in this place communicate with the electorate. You could see vividly in the IR reforms that here were a government that did not really know what was going on, what their people were thinking. If they had, they would have picked up much, much quicker the extreme damage that was being done by the IR reforms and moved much earlier to head off what was going to happen to them. But, because they did not have the communication with their electorate—they were not there, close to the people—they did not understand what was going on. Do not think that you can service your electorate by being there for 20 weeks of the year. Remember that you lose December. Even if you want to work over December, there are no public servants and nobody else wants to work with you over that period. So there is not much left of the year if you go ahead with what you are doing here. I can tell you right now that a lot of you are signing your own death warrants. I have a very good whip in my party. He gives me a lot of leave. So it is not going to worry me particularly, but here is a helpful hint for you blokes: if you want to stay here, you had better think twice about this one.

As far as communication goes, in the state parliament, where I served for 20 years before I came to this place, I could not understand why Canberra was so much out of step with the people. But when I came down here I found that one of the profound effects of that travel time is that you just do not have the time in your electorate that a state member has. The state parliament sat Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, so I had Monday and Friday in my electorate as well as the weekends. In this place, it might be out of step now, out of kilter. If you people in government now think you have some sort of magic wand and that you are going to be able to understand what the people are doing out there when the last mob could not, you are wrong. I can see clearly that there is a fundamental difference between federal government and state government. Federal government is nowhere near as close to the people as state government, and that is why the state governments have tended to survive where federal governments have not tended quite so much to survive.

So I would plead with the House about this. If our job is to listen to the people, to learn their pain or to get their ideas and to implement them in this place, then you have to spend a lot of time with those people. A lot of the time, all those people want from you is a sympathetic ear. They know there is nothing you can do to help them in their plight, whatever their plight might be, but it is really important for them to be able to talk to you. If you deprive them of the right to speak to you, you are not doing the right thing by your country. So I would plead with the government. I do not think you are going to back off, because that would be a sign of weakness, but I would plead with you: over the next few months, when you begin to realise just how badly this is hurting you in your electorates, reverse this decision. I would plead with you to consider that and, if you do not, then all I can say to you is: it’s been nice knowing you. A lot of you will not be here.

John Cobb (Calare, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, like others, may I take the opportunity to congratulate you, the member for Chisholm and the new Speaker of the House on obtaining your positions, which are very relevant to the topic of this debate. We pay a lot of respect to the positions of Speaker and Deputy Speaker, for the very good reason that you run the House and you make the order of business possible. Everybody knows that, if we wanted to have the House in total disruption all the time, we could do that—but we do not. We respect the fact that the Speaker and the deputy speakers have a job to do and we do not cross a certain line because we know the business of government must happen. I think this is a situation where that line has been crossed.

I can well understand why a new government, after four terms in opposition, would come in and be very hairy chested. I can quite understand why they would be feeling their oats and would want to make life easier for themselves and perhaps, in their eyes, harder for us. But I do not think that is the point. A mistake has been made and I think you have to step back and think about it. When a person as respected, as learned and as calm as Philip Ruddock—who is not noted for making political points—says you need to look at the legal implications, that says to me there could be a real issue here.

It is also about a new government being seen to do the right thing and give a fair go—and not by the opposition. This is not about doing the right thing by us. No government is ever expected to do that. But it is very much about doing the right thing by the Australian people and giving them their million dollars worth every day that this House sits. Sit it must and, when it does, it must sit properly.

The one thing no-one has explained to us yet is why we would sit without ministers, why we would sit without question time, why we would sit without quorums, why we would sit without divisions, why we would sit without MPIs. No-one has answered that question or even attempted to answer it, and I think it is probably a question that needs answering if you really do intend to deny the Australian people their right and to go ahead with this. I simply repeat: I do understand why you would feel as though you want to take control of the parliament in your own way, but this time you have gone too far. You have to step back and do the right thing, not by us but by Australia.

Wednesday, 13 February 2008

Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, I begin, like others have begun their talks tonight, by congratulating you on your appointment. I wish you every success in doing your job to the best of your ability. Of course, this side of the House will always assist you in doing that. It is sad, Mr Deputy Speaker, that you would take your seat on a day when the government is moving to reduce the accountability of the executive to this chamber, accountability that has existed in this House since Federation.

Before I get to this, can I look at the record of this government to date. It goes to a pattern of behaviour. What is it that we know about the government so far? This is a classic example of the way that they operate. There is always a yawning gap between their rhetoric and the reality of the government’s actions. I might give a few examples before I go on to the substance of what we are discussing here tonight.

Exhibit A is community cabinet meetings. It was announced to big fanfare that the cabinet would now go out into the community, meet with real Australians and talk to them about their problems. But of course there is always this gap between what the government says and the reality of what actually happens on the ground. In January, the first of these community cabinet meetings occurred in Western Australia in the seat of Canning, held by my very good friend Don Randall. The cabinet trooped out there to meet with real Australians. They were saying that it gives Australians the opportunity to come in and talk directly to their new government. But what we saw was essentially a meeting of the Canning branch of the Australian Labor Party. People who attended were heavily vetted beforehand to make sure that they were the right kinds of people: ‘We did not really want anyone coming in to discuss their problems. We wanted to make sure that they were actually true believers.’ So what we saw was a talkfest with ALP members where the people who attended were strictly vetted. There was a yawning reality gap between what was proposed and what actually happened.

Exhibit B is parliament resuming before Christmas. The new Prime Minister made a big show of this when he was opposition leader. He said, ‘If we’re elected, the parliament will resume before Christmas.’ The reality was that it was extraordinarily difficult for that to occur because of the mechanics of an election. When the Prime Minister made this promise he would have been aware of that. What we find instead is that not only did we not resume before Christmas but this is the latest parliamentary start in over a decade. Again, there is a yawning gap between the reality and rhetoric.

Exhibit C came to light today. The government made a big show of the fact that they were going to alter the standing orders to make sure that ministers answered the questions in question time on any given day. They were upset that they felt the ministers in the former government did not take the time to answer the questions in a genuine way. So the Labor Party were going to change that by altering standing orders. Yet today we find another backflip. They are not going to alter the standing orders to require ministers to answer questions—another broken promise and another gap between what is said and what actually happens.

The final exhibit is the earnest words we hear about improving transparency and accountability while the government goes about pulling stunts like this. It is part of a pattern of behaviour, and this proposal conforms to that pattern. A big announcement is made: the parliament is going to work five days a week.

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Danby interjecting

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Sidebottom interjecting

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Braddon! The member for Melbourne Ports should not encourage the member for Braddon.

Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Under your protection I will continue. What we see is another grand announcement by the government: the parliament will now work five days a week. But it is only once you look at the detail that you realise what a sham this proposal is. Once you look at the detail you realise that this is another empty gesture from an empty Prime Minister. What is actually proposed is that we will turn up on Fridays but the executive will not bother. The new member for Leichhardt—and I do not recognise him, if he is in the chamber—has already belled the cat. He told the Australian on 11 February this year exactly what the government intends to do:

From what I can gather—

he said—

there won’t be any question time on Friday, so we will be able to shoot through ...

We on this side of the House are very happy to work Fridays, but we will not accept a clayton’s parliamentary sitting day. We want a proper sitting day. We want a sitting day like it has existed in this House in the past. So let us have question time. Let us have an MPI. Let us have quorums and divisions. The fact is that the proposed parliamentary sitting schedule is completely unprecedented in that it will omit question time on a sitting day, something that has not happened since the standing orders were altered in 1950. In other words, this is nothing short of another political stunt devoid of accountability and lacking in serious thought.

Since 1987 parliament has only sat on a Friday to deal with urgent matters, including bills and Senate amendments. But Labor’s proposed reforms will seek to change all this. Will the opposition be able to use the parliament to challenge and query decisions of ministers of the Rudd government, as this parliament is supposed to be used, to hold the executive to account? No, we will not. We will not even be allowed to vote on legislation.

We are very happy to turn up on Fridays. We are very happy to work for a full week. But we insist that it is a full week of proper sitting days. This proposal is part of a pattern of behaviour that has been emerging from this government, and sadly it is a pattern of behaviour that should give all Australians grave cause for concern about the motives and the actions of their new government.

Louise Markus (Greenway, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, can I first congratulate you on your appointment today. A statement that we often hear is: ‘Actions speak louder than words.’ We have had a lot of discussion and debate over the last couple of hours. What are the words that we have heard from the new government? We have heard phrases like ‘the buck stops here’, ‘parliamentary democracy’ and ‘we will listen to the people’—the thousand people that they will listen to. But we have around 100,000 people in each of our electorates. Hopefully, as we do mail-outs, those people will have the opportunity to respond to us on weekends and on Fridays. When we are in our electorates it is an opportunity for us to listen. But do the government want to listen? Another word they use is ‘transparency’. But what I see in what the government are proposing today is the exact opposite: a lack of willingness to listen to the people, a lack of commitment to parliamentary democracy and a system where on a Friday there will be no ministers—and where will the Prime Minister be?—to listen to what the people have to say, through us speaking on their behalf.

Let us look at the cost to the taxpayers. We are here to serve them—is that right? I am sure that many of my colleagues would agree. The cost will be $1 million. I could give the government a list of roads in my electorate alone that need repairing because people are dying on them. One million dollars could fix some roads in one electorate. But spending $1 million to sit every Friday for the rest of the year is taking money away from, and not providing services for or responding to the needs of, the people that we are here to work for.

Let us look at the work ethic. We have all said that we work fairly hard. But there are people in our electorates who are working extremely hard as well. It appears to me that there are two different sets of standards—one for the opposition and one for the government. We are more than willing to work for five days. We have heard what the member for Leichhardt has said; I do not need to reiterate it. He is going to have a day off on Friday. The question is: will the Prime Minister have the day off on Friday? While we are working, who on the government benches will be working? They will have shot through; they will have gone.

I will finish with something that stood out when the member for Berowra was talking tonight. He talked about the possible legal implications. He referred to privilege. What is clear to me—and, I am sure, to my colleagues on this side—is that the government have demonstrated a complete lack of forethought, a complete lack of capacity to think things through. Instead they are making decisions quickly without any thought about the possible consequences. What will the government do with other decisions? That is a question we need to ask.

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, congratulations on your appointment. As the opposition we are keen to keep the government on the straight and narrow path of honest administration, subjecting everyone’s actions to scrutiny and, where necessary, political argument. The job of an opposition is to hold the government to account, scrutinise its decisions and apply our technical knowledge and experience to the policies it produces and the business of the day. Mainly, our analysis and our valid criticism of the government is concentrated in this place, the House of Representatives, where we compel the government to explain and defend itself. A government is, of course, only as good as its opposition. The Australian people demand a strong, hardworking opposition. They expect and deserve no less.

It is the Australian people who are being short-changed by this decision. How can we hold the government to account if they do not turn up on Fridays of sitting weeks? There is a popular saying that the world is run by those who turn up. Ministers will not be turning up on Fridays. The Prime Minister will not be turning up. We are happy to sit on Fridays. We are happy to turn up. But our job, as I say, is to hold the government to account, and how can we do that if the executive of government are not here to answer our legitimate questions? What will be happening on Friday? Private members’ business. It will be meaningless if there is no-one there to listen. In my experience of private members’ business, good subjects are raised. We see the work of the parliament at its best; we see a spirit of cooperation and bipartisanship. No-one will be listening. Ministers will have travelled home the day before in comfort, making full use of priority flights, limousine service and all the trappings of executive office. They will be relaxing by the pool, enjoying a drink, catching up with family and recovering after their difficult four-day week.

The ministers in Kevin Rudd’s cabinet are on light duties; their backbench colleagues are doing the heavy lifting. Under this system there are two classes of government members, the executive and the backbench, and there is a world of difference between them. The fact that Kevin Rudd chose to perpetuate the myth with the Australian public that when we are not here we are not at work is a disgrace. We take the work in our electorates very seriously. My electorate has expanded to 200,000 square kilometres and it stretches from Albury to Broken Hill to Tibooburra, which is the New South Wales-Queensland-South Australian border. I am not complaining—I love every inch of it—but, as others who represent large rural electorates have explained, the difficulties of managing that and managing the work of the parliament mean that we are wasting our time, we are wasting our constituents’ time and we are wasting time, money and resources in this place. I am here to represent my constituents. I have to tell you that they are asking: why are we here at midnight on the first day of parliament talking about this stuff when we should have sorted it out in a spirit of cooperation? It is not a good beginning. I urge members of the government to reconsider this rather silly proposal.

Alby Schultz (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I compliment you, Mr Speaker, on being elevated to the esteemed position of Speaker of the House. I am wondering if we are attempting to change Australia to a version of George Orwell’s Oceania where newspeak is now called ‘Labor speak’. The government proposes to change the parliamentary order of business under the guise of ‘greater accountability and scrutiny’. This sounds like doubleplusgood. In fact, the results of these proposed amendments would be doubleplusungood—that is, Mr Speaker, if we are now unable to use words like ‘evil’ or ‘bad’.

The central principle of newspeak was that it made it impossible to contemplate rebellion against the state, or even scrutiny of it—and that is precisely what this proposal tries to do. Look at how the newspeak or ‘Labor speak’ unfolds. The first promise is more sitting days, but the number of sitting weeks has been cut. Secondly, by sitting on Fridays, travel back to the electorate to serve constituents over the weekend will be well nigh impossible for rural and regional MPs because of the amount of travelling time involved. Of course, ‘purely coincidentally’, there are more rural and regional seats held by coalition MPs than Labor!

Next is the contention that Friday sittings will ‘provide an opportunity to harness the creativity and intellect and ideas of the members’. The only problem is that it seems only a few will be here to do any harnessing. In the words of the Labor member for Leichhardt just yesterday:

From what I can gather, there won’t be any question time on Friday, so we will be able to shoot through ...

This leads me to proposal 2: no question time on Fridays. If these new provisions are for ‘greater accountability and scrutiny’, why will there be a day every sitting week without a question time? Question time ensures that ministers of the government are held to account for their actions. The proposal is to actually have fewer question times this term than under the previous government—supposedly more scrutiny yet fewer question times. Could this be more Labor speak—doubleplusunquestiontime? If we are to scrutinise the government, they need to be here in the House and we need to vote on issues as they are debated.

Proposal 3 is that there be no quorums or divisions on Fridays. The ability to call a quorum ensures that a minimum number of government MPs are in the House. But in this new version of Orwell’s Oceania the opposition and, more importantly, the public will not be able to tell because you cannot call a quorum on Fridays. So the opposition will be in the House, working diligently on holding the possibly absent government to account. Does anyone really think that this will work? Assuming that there are indeed enough people left in the House on Fridays, no decisions can be taken until another time because there will be no divisions on Fridays. At a division in the House, all members available must attend and the government, to pursue its agenda, must at all times hold the majority. So here we have it. Not only is the government virtually guaranteeing that nobody from their side will be there because they do not have to hold a majority, because there will be no divisions, but also the opposition will not be able to check whether even the minimum number of members are in the House because there will be no quorums.

If this is the true worth of ‘greater scrutiny’ and ‘harnessing creativity’ then the government members are acting like a bunch of prefects working out how to change the rules so they can wag school legitimately and fool everyone else by pretending that they are hard at work. I think we could rename Nineteen Eighty-Four as 2008, with due apologies to Mr Orwell.

Proposal 4 is to move private members’ business from Monday to Friday and consequently have no quorums or divisions during this period. Once again, this is an opportunity for opposition members to speak to no-one and get no decisions—double-plusnoth-ing. Proposal 5 is to not have any matters of public importance debated on a Friday. This further demonstrates the Orwellian nature of the new government. So on Fridays we cannot debate matters of public importance, we cannot vote on issues, we cannot hold the government to account through questions and we cannot check whether anybody from the other side is even in the House. This reads like the announcement ‘Elvis has left the building’. How do you scrutinise without asking questions? How do you scrutinise without votes? How do you scrutinise a government that just is not there?

Proposal 6 is to increase sitting hours so that MPs can represent their constituency better. The increased hours are for government business—not opportunities for members to represent their constituents and certainly not for the opposition to hold the government accountable for its actions. I hope the public remembers the cynical way in which this government is already treating their rights. I hope it is the beginning of the end of this government and its doubleplus Labor speak. In the meantime, I will continue to write to my constituents, like I have tonight, telling them that I have to cancel the commitment I gave to attend the function because Mr Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister of this country, has decided that my constituency is not worth servicing on a Friday.

Joanna Gash (Gilmore, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My father always said that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who do all the work and those who take all the credit. He said, ‘Jo, always be in the first group for there is far less competition.’ How true that will be—the opposition doing all the work and the government taking all the credit.

Mr Speaker, you have heard it all before, but guess what—I want to say it all again! I want the people of my electorate of Gilmore to hear why I object most emphatically, on a number of grounds, to the government’s proposal to have parliament sit on Fridays. First and foremost, it is now becoming apparent that this arrangement was entered into cynically to create the impression that the Rudd Labor government was putting in more time. When you do the sums, an entirely different picture emerges. Parliament will sit for an extra 14 days but, in terms of accountability, there will be two fewer question times than last year—so 14 days in parliament where the government escapes scrutiny. What next does the Prime Minister intend to excuse himself from? From every second question time, like his party’s predecessor? There is no requirement for members to hang around, because the government has decided there will be no divisions or quorums.

I want to mention that the member for Leichhardt—so the people in my electorate know—is actually a government member. He is quoted in the Australian as saying:

From what I can gather, there won’t be any question time on Friday, so we will be able to shoot through ...

That encapsulates Labor’s attitude to this parliament. This arrangement is simply specious—it is manipulation of appearances, designed to mislead the Australian public and the people of my electorate of Gilmore. What this means, if everyone took the same view as the member for Leichhardt, is that we could all leave here to go back to our electorates to do some meaningful work for our constituents and leave the House to the moths.

I have a large area to cover, as do many members of the opposition whose constituencies are largely in rural and regional areas. We have many small towns and villages to visit, as our constituents cannot come to us because the state Labor government does not provide public transport. So the distances involved are just too much. How can the government reconcile forcing members away from their electorates and into another place just to harness the creativity and intellect and ideas, as was suggested by the Leader of the House on ABC Online on 11 February? How can the government justify wasting members’ valuable time in this way without there being any accountability?

I support my colleague the Leader of Opposition Business in the House, who said in the Financial Review that Australian taxpayers deserve better. How true. If we are to sit in parliament, then parliament must sit as it is intended and not as some contrived piece of showmanship that bolsters the image of the Prime Minister but does nothing else. There has to be real meaning. Allowing mem-bers to read onto the record their grievances can be achieved without going to the misuse of resources that this proposal will create. Neither is there an opportunity for matters of public importance. How can a proper debate ensue when all that will happen is that statements will be read into the record before an empty chamber, without challenge, without scrutiny and, it seems, without the government’s listening?

If this proposal were not such an obvious stunt to make the Prime Minister look good, then I would simply label it as idiotic. The government said that the additional sitting day, as conditional as it has been made, was to promote greater accountability and scrutiny. The very conditions they impose make it quite the opposite. There is no accountability, and there is no scrutiny on the Friday. So what is the point? What does this say about Labor’s grand gesture? This is an abuse of parliamentary process. There should be no strings attached. This idea deserves to go straight to the dump bin, as does the member who dreamed it up.

A member’s responsibility is first and foremost to their constituency. To force me away from my electorate—from those who cannot travel to see me—just to embellish the Prime Minister’s image is irresponsible and unacceptable. This proposal is a waste of time, it is a waste of money and it is a waste of our democratic process. If this is how the government intends to encourage its brand of democracy, then I want my opposition to this motion recorded well and truly. I will not be manipulated.

Fran Bailey (McEwen, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, may I place on the record my congratulations to you on being elected as Speaker. The hour is late, so I will very succinctly summarise my key concerns with this motion and why I strongly oppose it. This parliament exists to represent all people in our country. Every single one of us here shares the responsibility of ensuring that those we represent are heard and are well represented in this place. Central to that representation is making sure that the whole of the executive of government and individual ministers are held accountable for their actions. Put simply, that is just not possible if ministers do not turn up when parliament is sitting. And that is the key proposal under this motion: no questions to ministers and no MPI. The former Attorney-General, the member for Berowra, has raised some very significant constitutional and legal issues that I have grave concerns about. The government has not answered these questions, which have been raised now by several of my colleagues. In the Governor-General’s speech today we heard that two key tenets of the new government are accountability and transparency. I have to say that the government has failed this test on day one. This motion denies accountability and it denies the right of every single one of us in this place to ensure that we can do our jobs effectively.

The government certainly has failed the test of transparency on just one issue alone. On numerous occasions tonight, the government has been asked to table the legal advice upon which this motion is based. Why is it that the government will not table that legal advice? For all of these reasons, I oppose this motion. It is fraught with too many difficulties. It has the real potential to stifle the ability of individual members to do their jobs. I strongly oppose the motion. I would urge the government to reconsider its position, and I certainly support the amendments of the opposition.

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, congratulations to you. There is a saying: what is the use of having power if you can’t abuse it? And that is what has happened in this case. The Labor Party have regained power and have decided, at their very first attempt in this House, to abuse the power that has been bestowed on them through this House. As the member for Casey said earlier, this is quite clearly a stunt. We know who the creators of this stunt are: they are the member for Chifley, who lives in Sydney, and the member for Grayndler, who lives in Sydney too. Those of us who are from the rest of Australia know a little bit about the difference between flying from Sydney—half an hour—and flying from Perth, which is a two-day turnaround.

People ask me why my wife is not seen in Canberra more often to support me. She was here today for the first time in two years. The reason is that she runs a small business and a two-day turnaround is something that she cannot afford. Check the parliamentary record. My wife and my children do not come to Canberra because of the two-day turnaround.

At the end of the day, I am a person who likes to represent my electorate and represent the constituents. The electorate office on a Friday is almost like a doctor’s surgery. I am sure many members who do their job sufficiently have the same experience. People come in every half an hour or every 15 minutes and you have to just bowl over their issues one after the other. The issues are very important to them, such as knee reconstructions and all the other things they come to you about. They think you can help whether you can or not. It is important that you interact with the people. I will go to their houses if I have to.

The fact is that the government are not serious about this. The extra time that they are after can be found in the four days. We know that. The member for O’Connor provides a fair bit of colour and light, but Wilson is quite correct when he constructs the four-day extra time that you are seeking. This is all about tying up people as a stunt, on behalf of the now government, so that they cannot return to their electorates.

It is true that the first community cabinet came to Canning. I had to have a bit of a giggle about it because when I made some inquiries and made a comment in the media about not being invited, as it is my electorate, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s chief of staff eventually rang me and said, ‘Oh, you can come.’ I said, ‘That’s good; I’ll come.’ She said, ‘I’ll get back to you by Wednesday and we’ll organise the details and make sure you are there.’ I never heard from her again. I can understand that. A number of people that came to me from the electorate said, ‘We registered. We wanted to go and we didn’t get a guernsey. We wanted to ask questions.’ Chum Taylor, a former champion speedway rider, went along and asked Mr Rudd about pensions. I heard from those who were there—and I read in the media—that he did not answer the question. It is all smoke and mirrors. It is just spin. At the end of the day, it is about trying to look good on this issue.

The Friday sitting is going to be something that will eventually fail. I predict that this will fail. Look at the people who are here, making up the quorum tonight. They are either the rejected from the past or the brand new. We have ‘Scooter’ from the electorate of Leichhardt over here who wants to have POETS day every Thursday so that he can get back to Cairns in time. Where is Entsch when you need him—a man of substance? At the end of the day, Scooter from Leichhardt has belled the cat on this issue and we know that the government are going to be keeping this place together with the new and the rejected on the back bench. The ministers are probably at home now, sleeping and getting ready for their day tomorrow, and you are being used up on the back bench. You should feel pretty bad about it.

There are only four members of the House of Representatives from the Labor Party in Western Australia and one of them sits in the House now. I congratulate him on his election. But the member for Brand should know as well as anyone that we get special circumstances to turn around from Western Australia. We can actually break our journey because it is considered so long. This affects the member for Perth, the brand new member for Fremantle, the member for Brand and the member for Hasluck. She is going to need to be back in her electorate. She got away with it this time but she might not get away with it every time. There is going to be a redistribution. Who will know? In some respects, this is a punishment for Western Australia for having done so well at the last election. You are going to do what you can to keep the Western Australian members in Canberra because you have so few of them on your side.

This is an absolute stunt that is going to backfire on the Labor Party. The electorate will wise up to it shortly and realise that the government are determined to keep you here. I object to the fact that people think we are not working if we are not in Canberra. I consider that when I am in my electorate I work much harder for and on behalf of the people who put me there. This insinuation that if you are not in Canberra you are not working is quite fatuous and it should be rejected, expunged and exposed for what it really is—a stunt.

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I always thought that hubris took a little while before it set in. Usually, governments have been in power for quite a while before they start getting cocky about government and the hubris sets in. The hubris has not even taken two months with the new Labor government. It is quite incredible. Have a look at the issue with the apology. We got the detailed wording this evening for an apology that is supposed to be made tomorrow. This is something that your side has been talking about for months, and yet it is the night before—not even the morning before—that we get the wording of the apology. So much for government accountability and transparency. It sets a good precedent really early.

The problem with the whole idea of having no divisions and no quorums on Fridays brings to mind a title of a movie. I will change it somewhat: ‘What if you held parliament and no-one came?’ That is one of the potential aspects of this and one of the potentially ludicrous situations that you could have when there are no quorums, no divisions, no question times and no MPIs. Sometimes you hear people out in the community saying, ‘Parliament is just like a schoolyard.’ Quite frankly, if you think about this in terms of a school, think about some of the schools that have a Friday free-dress day. In this case the equivalent would be Friday no teacher day, Friday no rollcall day, Friday do whatever you like when you turn up at school day. I say, ‘Do whatever you like,’ because what about bad behaviour? What happens if a member gets up and the behaviour that they display is utterly disgraceful? How is the Speaker supposed to discipline that member if he cannot call a division? It is absolutely ridiculous.

If Friday is supposedly such an important day for parliamentary hearings, why is it that we will have no quorum, no division, no question time and no MPI? Do you know why? It is because the ministers know full well that you need that three-day turnaround so that you can actually go to your constituencies and do other work within your electorate. They know it. They need to get out and do their work. While they are gallivanting around the country, they are hoping that the rest of parliament is going to sit here and dutifully talk, with no quorums, no divisions et cetera.

The member for Canning correctly pointed out that this could almost be inferred as being some sort of revenge on Western Australian people for having dared to have the audacity to vote strongly for the Liberal Party. The fact is that, when you go to Perth, you are effectively going to have a two-week turnaround. You will leave Perth one week and you will not be able to deal with constituents in the interim. Basically you are condemned to two weeks in Canberra if you choose to stay on the Friday.

The member for Berowra made another important point: what about parliamentary privilege, if you do not have a quorum? What happens if a member just voices the word ‘quorum’ or says ‘I draw your attention to the state of the House’? Will we just hold it over to next time? If the member then makes some statement that would require privilege, there could be a very real problem with it.

Basically, Labor are riding roughshod over the Constitution and, as has been seen with a whole variety of aspects of their behaviour over the last couple of months, they are shooting from the hip and not thinking about the consequences of what they are doing. I urge the government to support the amendments to the legislation so that we can get a realistic footing to this so-called decision.

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, allow me to congratulate you on your appointment to the high office of Deputy Speaker. I think it is unfortunate that, in this debate, we started with 15 minutes and then it was cut to five minutes and now it has been cut to three minutes. I also think it is unfortunate that here we are at 20 to one in the morning and we are still debating this particular matter.

I respect the fact that the government has been elected. Any government has the right to change the sitting hours and to determine the days on which the parliament sits, but I believe that government also has the responsibility to make sure that our Australian parliamentary democracy survives. I am all about the parliament sitting for a longer period and I am all about the parliament having more opportunity to debate the key issues confronting the Australian people. But what has been suggested in the proposals put forward by the Leader of the House is that we should have a clayton’s Friday. As the Friday will not in fact be a genuine parliamentary sitting day, when we have a question time and a debate on a matter of public importance, it will become, as the honourable member for Leichhardt has suggested, a nick-off day—a day when we can all shoot through; a clayton’s day; a day which in fact will not be a true parliamentary day.

As a member representing a regional electorate, I am somewhat concerned over the fact that the parliament will be sitting for five days—or four days, and on the fifth day you can disappear—when what should happen if the government believes that we need extra days to debate the important issues of the day is that we ought to have more sitting weeks, maybe of three or four days. If the government has a very strong legislative program that it needs to get through in its first six or 12 months of office, then by all means have these extra days but let them be genuine parliamentary days when, as an opposition, we have the opportunity of holding the government to account. I just think it is unfortunate that what we have dressed up as an opportunity for additional debate is in reality an attempt by the government of the day to escape from parliamentary scrutiny.

I am all about additional days. I am all about proper debate. I am all about the government having the time it needs to implement its legislative program. I am all about respecting the fact that the government has a mandate to do certain things. But let us have genuine parliamentary days. Let us not have clayton’s days. Let us not have days when members turn up at nine o’clock and then are able, as the member for Leichhardt tells us, to shoot through. Let us be genuine.

I think the people of Australia deserve more. They elected this government. This government has a mandate. The people of Australia have respect for our Prime Minister. They believe our Prime Minister stands for important principles. I think that this motion currently before the House undermines the confidence and the sense of trust that the Australian people placed in the member for Griffith and his team on 24 November. I appeal to the member for Grayndler, who is the minister opposite, to reconsider this matter. By all means, take your extra day when you need it to start with, but let us go back to a reasonable situation where the parliament does have the opportunity to hold the government to account. Every day we sit we have a question time and we have a debate on a matter of public importance.

For rural members, in particular, sitting five days is not appropriate because it means that rural constituents will be disadvantaged and they will not be able to get to see their members of parliament in the same way as people in the capital cities are able to see their members of parliament. Let us have a fair go. I ask the member for Grayndler to reconsider.

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, I add my congratulations on your rise to the position of Deputy Speaker, although I do understand that it was not your first choice—but so be it.

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What was her first choice?

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think she wanted to be a minister, didn’t she? I think it is very interesting to note that the so-called pep talk to the new ministers and new members of parliament on the government side to try to avoid hubris and arrogance obviously did not work. I have been watching this debate quite closely, both in the chamber and on the closed-circuit TV in our rooms, and it has been very obvious that the ministers have not gotten over their hubris and the members have not taken this very seriously. They think, ‘We’re in government now, so we are just going to treat you like the rubbish that we think the opposition is.’

Unfortunately, I do not think that wears well in the electorate and that has obviously been shown by the response that it has brought about. I listened to the four members of the government who had a view on this and spoke to the motion. It is quite interesting that only four did; they thought it was a fait accompli. They raised the idea that we will still have four question times a week and we will still have three MPIs a week, just as we did in the last parliament. But if we are actually sitting two fewer weeks than we did in the last parliament, in a normal year—not an election year—that is obviously eight fewer question times and six fewer MPIs. When I and many of us here first came in, we were sitting for 20 weeks and we have sat for up to 23 weeks in a period. If we are sitting fewer weeks, then obviously we will have fewer question times and fewer MPIs, and therefore we will have less accountability to the parliament.

This proposal has been trumpeted by the Prime Minister as making politicians work harder by scheduling an extra 15 sitting days. Every member in this House knows that quite often they actually work harder in their electorate than they do here. I actually find being in Canberra a lot easier than being the member for Barker out in the electorate because my electorate is 64,000 square kilometres. I drive about 80,000 kilometres a year. I will obviously be driving less because I will not have those extra Fridays; I will be in the parliament. In fact, the earliest I can get back to my electorate—that is, to the start of my electorate—on present flights is nine o’clock on a Friday night. There is not a lot that you can do at nine o’clock on a Friday night. There would be many members of parliament who are a lot worse off than I am. In fact, if I were still living where I was until very recently, I would not be able to get home before midnight. There are many members of parliament who will not be able to get back until Saturday because of the flights that we have scheduled here in Australia.

So what is going to happen? Obviously we are going to have a whole lot of people staying here in Canberra. It might be great for the Canberra economy, but it is not going to be great for the constituencies that we were elected to represent and to meet, unless people take the attitude that, as the new member for Leichhardt has said, we will just buzz off, which means we will not actually take the Friday very seriously at all. I can assure you that I take parliament seriously, but obviously this government does not. It is a great shame that this parliament and this new government have taken this attitude. It has been a bit too smart by half. I know we are very limited tonight—for sensible reasons of wanting to get a reasonable night’s sleep—but I just hope that the new government gets over this silly idea. Anyone with any common sense will say to you that this is not going to be in the interests of the constituents. It is not going to be in the interests of members of parliament because now we cannot vote on private members’ business. What you are effectively saying to us is that, as members, we will not be able to vote on private members’ business; we cannot have divisions; we cannot have quorums. Frankly, I think we all know that the legal advice that you have on this is pretty dodgy, because section 39 of the Constitution clearly says that we have to have a quorum in parliament. How can you decide whether there is a quorum if you cannot call one? This parliament, a bit like Gough Whitlam, is trying to override the Constitution as they tried to do in 1975. There is a very strong whiff of that sort of silly ignorance and arrogance over the Australian Constitution, which we all hold quite dear.

Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If this government understands one thing, it is the power of symbols. In fact, it is expert at creating symbols. For 12 months now, we have heard ad nauseam about the education revolution, broadband, fresh ideas, economic conservatism, a lid on petrol and grocery prices, a federal-state compact, a lid on interest rates, more affordable housing—and the list goes on. For 12 months, it was all care and no responsibility. For 12 months, it was all symbols and no responsibility. So it is not a surprise that, early in its term of government, the Rudd government comes up with more symbols: no holidays for the Prime Minister and ministers and now a harder-working parliament—a five-day parliament—all under the guise of more accessibility, more accountability and more democracy.

Of course, the opposite is true because the Prime Minister will not be here on a Friday. There will be no ministers here on a Friday. The member for Leichhardt will not be here on a Friday. It will be a part-time parliament; it will not be a five-day parliament. It will be a part-time parliament and private members will not be able to suspend standing orders and have a substantive matter debated. The Speaker will have no capacity to protect the public from unwarranted attack. This is like all the other symbols I mentioned: when you look behind the symbols, there is nothing. This government has not done the work. This government has no detailed plans in any of these areas. The government is scrambling to find substance to put behind the symbols and, in the process, mistakes are being made. This proposal in front of us tonight is a classic case in point. It is a stunt. It is ill conceived. It is too clever by half. It is dangerous. It is arrogant. It is a return to the arrogance of the Keating years, when prime ministerial attendance at question time was optional.

The government know that this proposal is a dog. You can see it in their eyes here tonight. They have not got their hearts in it. They are defending the indefensible. In the interest of accountability, in the interest of accessibility, in the interest of democracy, I urge the government to withdraw this stunt and rethink the proposal.

Danna Vale (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I take this opportunity, Madam Deputy Speaker Burke, to congratulate you on your elevation to the deputy speakership. I wish you every success and satisfaction. This motion puts six proposals to the House while, at the same time, suggesting that these reforms to the standing orders actually allow greater accountability and scrutiny. These proposals suggest more sitting days but will actually create days without question time, without divisions or quorums, with no divisions or quorums during private members’ business; extra days without a session for matters of public importance; and, finally, an increase in the number of hours that parliament sits each week. If such proposals actually did increase the accountability and scrutiny of government, none of us on this side of the House would have anything much about which we could complain. But they do no such thing. Indeed, they do exactly the opposite.

Those of us who have worked with the Labor Party over many years and who have come to know its use of illusion and artifice should not be amazed that these changes to the standing orders would result in less scrutiny, less accountability and less transparency for the people of Australia. These traditional procedures of this House go to the heart of parliamentary democracy, and to parliamentary accountability and scrutiny of our democracy. They are what parliament is all about. If a sitting parliament does not include a question time, a session for matters of public importance or dispenses with the requirement to hold divisions or form quorums, we do not need to open parliament that day. We could just hold a meeting in a committee room, because there is no way that we as the people’s opposition can hold the government accountable without those fundamental parliamentary mechanisms. And, as a matter of fact, the Leader of the House well knows why the Main Committee was established in the first place. Even the member for Grayndler—as he then was—in a question to the then Speaker on 8 February 2007, a little over a year ago, actually said:

But, Mr Speaker, House of Representatives Practice is very clear. It says on page 527 that the accountability of the government is demonstrated most clearly and publicly at question time when for a period on most sitting days questions without notice are put to ministers.

For the benefit of my constituents, I would actually like to refer to the Practice, which is not often read in this place, just so they are aware of the particular page to which the now Leader of the House referred. This is what the Practice says:

One of the more important functions of the House is its critical review function. This includes scrutiny of the Executive Government, bringing to light issues and perceived deficiencies or problems, ventilating grievances, exposing, and thereby preventing the Government from exercising, arbitrary power, and pressing the Government to take remedial or other action. Questions are a vital element in this function.

It is fundamental in the concept of responsible government that the Executive Government be accountable to the House. The capacity of the House of Representatives to call the Government to account depends, in large measure, on its knowledge and understanding of the Government’s policies and activities. Questions without notice and on notice (questions in writing) play an important part in this quest for information.

…            …            …

The accountability of the Government is demonstrated most clearly and publicly at Question Time when, for a period (currently usually over an hour) on most sitting days, questions without notice are put to Ministers. The importance of Question Time is demonstrated by the fact that at no other time in a normal sitting day is the House so well attended. Question Time is usually an occasion of special interest not only to Members themselves but to the news media, the radio and television broadcast audience and visitors to the public galleries.

It is obvious that question time—and this is in the quote referred to by the Leader of the House himself—is a critical review function of this House. Further, the then member for Griffith, the current Prime Minister, as the Leader of the Opposition, said in this place on 29 May 2007, when lecturing on accountability:

The reason this censure motion has been moved goes to the heart of accountability in this parliament.

And on 20 September 2007, he said:

The bare minimum level of accountability is to have, in fact, an answer to these questions.

Those of us who have worked with Labor over many years have come to learn of their deliberate use of symbolism without substance. We have come to know the chest-thumping without real action, and we have come to know of the rhetoric, empty of purpose or strategies for meaningful delivery. The people of Australia will also come to only believe what Labor do, not what they say.

We often hear many a Labor member wax misty-eyed about the light on the hill. Indeed, Madam Deputy Speaker, you actually reflected on this particular image in your speech today in the House. What many of us here in this place have come to know is that, when it suits its purpose, Labor can catch the unwary in a show of blinding glare, of useless political razzle-dazzle. We have seen it before. Labor does symbolism better than the Da Vinci Code, visual effects better than Hollywood and packaging and presentation better than Harrods.

When we see any statements by Labor purporting to bestow a greater largesse, a better bounty or, in this case, more sitting days promoted as greater parliamentary accountability and scrutiny, then alarm bells ring and we know we must take a closer look at that proposal. A closer look at section 39 of the Constitution, which provides for quorums in parliament, raises legal questions as to whether or not quorums can be abolished on a sitting day. The government actually says that it has legal advice on this issue but refuses to show it to us. I would like my constituents to actually note that.

These proposals have not been clearly thought out. Indeed, these proposals are a fraud, another political Labor razzle-dazzle, pretending to do one thing but delivering another, pretending to create an extra day of parliamentary accountability and scrutiny. They will do exactly the opposite. The critical review function of this House, one of its most important functions in our parliamentary democracy, will be denied to the Australian people for those extra sitting days. Indeed, what the Australian people will actually get is a Prime Minister and his executive who will enjoy an RDO on each of those extra 14 Fridays allocated as sitting days. We can believe the flippant comments made by the new member for Leichhardt that he plans to shoot through on Fridays. What a sham! How can the people of Australia be convinced that this government values the privilege that it has so recently been granted by the people of Australia? This government is not serious about greater accountability to the people of Australia; it is only pretending that it is. This is a cynical exercise. While I have no objection to working in this House on Fridays instead of working in my electorate, I reject the government’s proposals because they will effectively undermine the critical review functions of this House.

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Heritage, the Arts and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This should have been a very proud and happy day for the new Kevin Rudd government. Their families and friends were here and we were all sworn in. It should have been a good day. Unfortunately, it is a day of shame for the new government. The embarrassment is palpable in the people yawning over there on the government benches. The member for Leichhardt is doubtless not looking forward to his local media when it is revealed how little interest he really does have in representing his electorate in this place.

What is being suggested is that 20 per cent of our sitting time in the future be without government scrutiny. We have sat for a century—over 100 years now—in Australia as a democracy. This government should be continuing the tradition of the opposition being able to hold the government of the day accountable and to scrutinise it on every day that the parliament is sitting. Instead, it is trying to get away with a cheap and shabby trick of shutting down scrutiny for 20 per cent of government time. Why would this new Kevin Rudd government be so anxious to shut down the role of the opposition in stopping Friday MPIs, quorums, divisions and question time? Because Mr Rudd in particular has already targeted some of the most vulnerable people in Australia—rural and regional Australians—and he does not want the population at large to know. As we have heard time and time again from speakers, it is rural and regional Australians who will suffer most from this proposed new lack of scrutiny. We who represent regional Australia, spending half a day flying to get here, are going to be most disadvantaged on most Fridays in not being able to get home and get back on Sunday. This is a very serious time for regional Australians, already being attacked by Mr Rudd. Let me list what has already been done to them since this government came into office. The government has already abolished the Regional Partnerships grants; it has already cut down exceptional circumstances funding—

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Does the Leader of the House have a point of order?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is not true.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Have you got a point of order?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes. Relevance.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order. I call the member for Murray.

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Heritage, the Arts and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The reason this government is so anxious to shut us down from applying strict and usual scrutiny is that it is already trying to cover the fact that it has targeted some of the most vulnerable Australians—I repeat, rural and regional Australians. Exceptional circumstances funding for drought relief has been slashed, particularly for those who have to be resettled—

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What!

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Heritage, the Arts and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Read your own notes. You have already cut down the communications budgets for those on exceptional circumstances. You have cut away the living allowance for apprenticeships, in particular horticultural and agricultural apprenticeships.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on a point of order—on relevance. This is just a policy matter.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, the member for Murray is relevant. The member for Murray will continue.

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Heritage, the Arts and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As we can see, this is why you do not want the scrutiny of the opposition. This government has a lot to be ashamed of and a lot to hide. I strongly suggest you remember that you were elected by constituents from across Australia; you should serve this democracy in the way that other governments have done before you and allow yourself to be subjected to question time, quorums and MPIs in the usual way. Then we will see the real calibre of this government. Unfortunately, it has already been found wanting on its very first day.

Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure, Roads and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening because I am ashamed to be part of a parliament that may move us to a clayton’s position. We have had prior to Christmas this chest-thumping, supposedly victorious government suggesting to the people of Australia the clear understanding that, instead of working just four days a week, we were all going to be working five days a week. I accuse you of putting forward a clayton’s proposition, because we are not going to be working five days a week; we are going to be allowing your ministers to take an RDO. It is shameful. The suggestion that you put forward is absolutely shameful, if it does not prove to be illegal to boot.

I work seven days a week for my constituency—not five. The suggestion that I work less than five is an insult to all the people who have been in this House today and before. I work seven days a week, and if you put this proposition forward I will finish up working just five days a week, because I will not be able to get home to my electorate and back to Canberra in time for the next week’s sitting. You ought to be collectively ashamed of yourselves. If this is just a proposition put by people of straw, I am not surprised, because that is what it sounds like to me. You have put to this parliament a proposition that is deplorable. You ought to be collectively ashamed of yourselves. There is no question about the hardworking ethics of this opposition, let me tell you. In our place in a previous time, you may not have been committed to your electorates. You tell the people of Australia that you are and that you are going to work harder. Are you going to work harder, or are you putting up a clayton’s Friday—where the process of parliamentary democracy will not occur? There will be no MPI. There will be no quorum. There will be no divisions. There will be no executive present. What sort of institution do you want this democracy to be in the long term? I finish on a simple note: I work seven days a week; you ought to try the same thing. Come and have a wander around my electorate one day and see what work is all about. Be ashamed if you get this motion through. Reconsider. If you have got any brains, if you have got any collective intestinal fortitude, consider what you are going to put to the people of Australia via this parliament.

Question put:

That the amendments (Mr Hockey’s) be agreed to.