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

On indulgence, I am sure the House will not mind being informed about the process that we are going through. This is one of those rare occasions when all members of the House of Representatives, no matter what their persuasion, are united on one issue—and that is dealing with the Senate. I am trying to be optimistic and upbeat, but I am afraid that the news from the Senate is not good.

The Senate is still dealing with the minerals resource rent tax bill. It has dealt with the Asset Recycling Fund Bill. The Asset Recycling Fund Bill has been amended, which means it will come back to the House of Representatives and will need to be dealt with by us before we rise. There will probably be amendments to the minerals resource rent tax bill as well, which will then come back to us. We will obviously also want to deal with that before we rise. The Senate has indicated to me that it does not intend to consider the Qantas Sale Amendment Bill until tomorrow morning, which means that we will not be leaving first thing in the morning, as I had hoped and had said at the end of question time.

Given that, there is no point in waiting for the Senate, because they are not going to deal with that. I propose that we will suspend the sittings after we have finished with the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Seniors Health Card and Other Measures) Bill 2014, which the government does want to pass in this sitting session. That will take probably another hour-and-a-half at most. Then the House will suspend and allow people to go out to dinner and do whatever else they want to do. Then we will come back tomorrow. I do not propose to come back early, because I want the Senate to have been able to do as much of their business that will then come back to the House as possible.

So I propose that we start the sitting day at about 11 tomorrow. The Manager of Opposition Business and I have been locked in cooperative and supportive negotiations for most of the afternoon and we have decided that the bills that need to be dealt with will be dealt with expeditiously and that we will have effectively one speaker per side, unless the Leader of the Opposition wishes to speak on these bills. I expect that will take a couple of hours. Then those bills will go back to the Senate. At that point we will not need to remain. I am hoping that we will be out by about one o'clock tomorrow afternoon and people will be able to get on whatever planes they can from tomorrow afternoon. Of course, it is not my fault; it is not the fault of the Manager of Opposition Business. It is due to the Senate processes. We are not allowed to second-guess the Senate, so I will not do so. That is the update for members.