Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the House is overseas on government business, so for today and probably tomorrow I will act on his behalf. The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry will be Acting Deputy Leader of the House.

As members know, the House continues to sit today awaiting the receipt of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009 [No. 2] and related legislation from the Senate. As is often the case at this time of the year, we are—some would say regrettably—in the hands of the Senate, but we will patiently wait until we see the legislation emerge from the Senate. I advise members—and I have had a conversation with the Manager of Opposition Business about these matters—that, whilst the blue lists us as sitting until five o’clock this evening, it is possible that we may sit as late as seven o’clock but not later than seven o’clock. I will keep the House informed about this in the course of the day. In the meantime, whilst we patiently await the CPRS outcome from the Senate—which, of course, is very important to the government and the nation—we will deal with government legislation as listed.

It has been agreed between the Manager of Opposition Business and me—and I hope it is agreeable to the Independent members whom, regrettably, I have not had the chance to consult—that we will have an unofficial break for lunch from 12.30 to 2 pm. By this I mean that there is an agreement that neither quorums nor divisions will be called between 12.30 and 2 pm, which will enable members to have an agreeable lunchbreak if that is their desire.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Hopefully not a disagreeable one!

Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is entirely a matter for the exercise of members’ discretion. Agreeable lunches may be more convenient on this side of the House today than on the other, but it is entirely a matter for the discretion of members. Thank you for that opportunity, Mr Speaker, and I thank the Manager of Opposition Business for his cooperation.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I notice that almost the entire Labor caucus is in the chamber this morning to hear from the member for Paterson on the Health Insurance Amendment (New Zealand Overseas Trained Doctors) Bill 2009, but I can assume that it is because that was the Minister for Foreign Affairs’ leadership pitch speech this morning. That is why the Deputy Prime Minister is looking particularly pale and nervous this morning. She thought she would in fact be the next leader of the Labor Party. Good speech, Steve. I am not sure that it will necessarily convince the caucus that you are the man, but good luck to you.

The Acting Leader of the House and I had a conversation this morning and we understand the process. The House of Representatives often finds itself in this position at this time of the year. Because of the mismanagement of the current government, it is particularly vexed at this stage. Of course, we are particularly disappointed that there is no question time today, because we wanted to hold the government to account for its failed policies in areas of border protection and interest rates and inflation and unemployment and debt and deficit and defence, in particular—defence personnel, materiel and science—all the areas that we know the government is very vulnerable on and the government would hate to be held account for in question time today. We are happy, if the government chooses to, to have a question time today. We are quite prepared to come into the House and ask the questions that need to be asked about the government’s failures. I am sure the Deputy Prime Minister would admirably take up the cudgels against the opposition, as we would to them.

So we do call on the government to respect the parliament and have a question time. We understand this mechanism for the suspension of sittings means that this is not a new sitting day—we may have done that ourselves in government on occasion. However, we think this new broom sweeps clean all the fine talk from the Labor Party, the now government, when they were in opposition about the importance of the House of Representatives and question time and short answers and so on. We would expect them to do that in government and have a question time today and give us the opportunity to hold them to account. We call on the government to do so.

We in the opposition will patiently go through the processes today. We have some fine speakers ahead and we look forward to an early resolution of this delay by the Senate which is causing us to be here rather than at home in our electorates with our families, working for our good constituents.