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

The opposition will not be opposing the proposed changes to the standing orders. However, there are a number of points that need to be placed on the record. The first point is that the Friday sittings have been a complete disaster for the government. They introduced Friday sittings and changed the standing orders in a very substantial way without in any way consulting with the opposition. Prior to Christmas the new Prime Minister boasted to the Australian people that if parliamentarians did not have five days of sittings then they were lazy. Quite frankly, that was an affront to every parliamentarian who has sat in this chamber since 1901, because the chamber has never sat on a regular scheduled basis for five days a week—never. It is also the case that, since 1901, there has never been a regular scheduled sitting day of this parliament without a question time.

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

Mr Price interjecting

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

I hear the interjection from the Chief Opposition Whip, who was the architect of ‘farcical Fridays’ in an attempt to try and play a rather cute political game where ministers and the Prime Minister would not have to attend on a Friday and could therefore travel around the country visiting the electorates of members of the opposition who were in the parliament doing the yards making a difference for their constituents.

Without going through the entire history of the standing orders of the parliament, which I will save everyone from, I will say this: these were ill thought through changes to the standing orders. Without the decisive action of the opposition, there would have been a failure to recognise that the standing orders set up by the engineer of Friday sittings, the Leader of the House, would not have been constitutional. It is not in compliance with section 39 of the Constitution to hold Friday sittings without a quorum. How absurd it was to have actual sittings where a quorum is called and the parliament itself is not the quorum, and where a Speaker, as you quite correctly identified, Madam Deputy Speaker Burke, is unable to establish that there is a quorum in the chamber. Section 39 of the Constitution is explicit in the demand by the founding fathers that the parliament have a set quorum in order to be able to sit; yet, through rather cute mechanisms, the government, in a very naive and obviously unlawful way, tried to establish new standing orders that would prevent the establishment of a quorum.

It is also the case—and we saw it quite vividly on Tuesday when the delayed divisions were held in quite extraordinary circumstances—that, because those divisions had been poorly thought through, the government had to bring forward the sitting on Tuesday by one hour to allow for outstanding divisions to be counted. We saw only too obviously those divisions become a farce in themselves because, even though the member for Moncrieff, who is in the chamber, and the member for Cowper respected the Speaker’s decision for them to leave the chamber for 24 hours, there was a further vote on the next sitting day to uphold the naming of those members, and they were suspended for a further 24 hours. Had they openly defied the Speaker and refused to leave the chamber—and you were in the chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, so you know it—you would have had to close down the chamber because the Speaker would have been unable to enforce the Speaker’s decision. If the member for Moncrieff and the member for Cowper had not left the chamber, we would have quite graphically understood that there could be a total humiliation of the Speaker rather than just a partial humiliation of the Speaker.

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

I might just say to the member for North Sydney that he is straying near to reflecting on the chairs on the day and I think he should come back to the point.

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

Thank you for that guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker, but this does relate to the standing orders. How the chair feels I am not too sure and quite frankly, given the situation, I am not really interested. I make this point: substantial changes to the standing orders have always come out of either the appropriate committee, which is the Procedure Committee of this House, or negotiation between the government and opposition. Neither of those has occurred on the two occasions. On the first occasion, when the government came in with new standing orders, there was no consultation with the opposition, and significantly it did not come from the Procedure Committee of the House. Secondly, these new standing orders, which were foisted upon us at 7.30 this morning, did not go through the Procedure Committee; nor was there consultation with us. So the government have set precedents here. They are very sad, regrettable precedents but they are precedents.

We are not opposing these changes to the standing orders because we believe that ultimately they mean an end to farcical Fridays. We are happy to see the end of the most disastrous first term initiative from this government in just three months.

Question agreed to.