Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I present a chart showing the program of sittings for 2017. Copies of the program have been placed on the table. I move:

That the program for 2017 be agreed to.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank the Leader of the House for conceding defeat. If you wanted evidence that this government does not want the parliament to ever meet, it is in the sitting program that has just been distributed. This sitting program needs to be seen in the context of the standing orders changes that have already been made. Only a few weeks ago, the standing orders were changed to remove 2½ hours of government business from every week. That means, when you look at what they have now done, that effectively 2½ weeks of government business will disappear every year. I note that the program that we have just received is for 18 weeks of sittings. This is on the back of comments from the Leader of the House when he was the Manager of Opposition Business. In 2009, these were the words of the then Manager of Opposition Business, now Leader of the House:

The incompetent leader of government business in the House has yet again managed to restrict the number of weeks of sitting to 18 …

That is the number that he has now introduced, and he has introduced it on the back of having already cut 2½ hours per week of government business from the program.

We have seen the management of the parliament become an abject disaster. Today, only moments ago, a member of the government said that he seconded a motion but that no-one should infer from that that he agreed with it. I have to say, the faction of the Minister for Revenue and Financial Services is getting bigger. The Minister for Justice has joined it. Eight members of the government joined that faction when they left one Thursday afternoon. We have seen this government's weekly stuff-up moving one day earlier. It started in the first week, where it was a Thursday afternoon when they all rushed home, and we took control of the floor of the House. Then the minister for revenue and the Minister for Justice decided to condemn their own government in a vote—they did that on a Wednesday. When we were last here, it was on a Tuesday that they brought in the guns-for-votes issue. I arrived here this morning and thought, 'What are they going to offer us for Monday?' because the weekly stuff-up has been moving one day earlier each time. They gave us the member for Wright. They gave us the first member of parliament from the government benches to be willing to second a motion condemning his own side of politics.

If you cannot manage the parliament, you cannot run a government. The problem that the Leader of the House is grappling with is that he has now decided that he is not even going to try to fix it, that the easiest thing is just to not have a parliament—that way no-one will notice. So what we see is government business time disappearing, being cut back and, at the exact same time, moving to a number of sitting weeks which is the exact number that the Leader of the House used to describe as incompetence. When he was on this side of the House, what he is doing right now in terms of the number of sitting weeks was the Leader of the House's argument for claiming there was incompetence. He said:

The government manage the schedule of business, and we are prepared to let them keep on being incompetent. We will turn up—

That was a commitment they made in opposition. They did not keep that commitment when they came to government! The idea of turning up is something they let go of very early. He said:

We will keep showing them up for the failures that they are.

Well, they have shown someone to be the failures, but it is not quite turning out the way that those opposite want.

What those opposite have done and what the Leader of the House has done is to have a situation since this last election where the Senate, we now realise, should not have even been meeting. There was a cloud over who could vote and who could not, and they kept it secret. They kept it secret for one really simple reason: to get Bob Day's vote. They gave money to Bob Day's companies to get Bob Day's vote, and then they also rorted the location of his election office to get Bob Day's vote. They want the parliament to be some ridiculous deal that they handle in this way.

We are in a situation where we have got used to the fact that, week after week, there have been discussions of chaos and incompetence. This week, for the first time, we are also having questions asked about corruption. When those questions get asked, I am not surprised that those opposite, every time they are asked a question, want to pivot to a different issue. I am not surprised that those opposite, every chance they get, want to cut down the amount of time that this parliament sits. I am not surprised that those opposite want to make sure that the number of weeks that they used to view as an outrage is now the number of weeks they will deliver. Those opposite have discovered that, although they thought they did not need an agenda and that they would just be able to administer everything, they cannot even get that right.

These are not mistakes where people say: 'That is just run-of-the-mill. These things happen all the time.' Labor had a minority parliament, and none of these things ever happened to us when we were in a minority. They claim to have a working majority. They claim to be a well-oiled campaign machine. They claim to be an election-winning machine, yet what happens when they get here? They become the first government to lose control of the floor of the parliament in more than 50 years. They become the first government to vote to condemn itself. They become the first government to have their own members jumping to attention when there is a motion condemning them, saying, 'Please, can I be the seconder?' and then, after question time, jumping up and down saying, 'I might have seconded it, but no-one should presume that I agree with it.'

We have now gotten used to the concept that at the end of question time no-one should leave the chamber, because you never know what is going to happen. There have been lots of times in governments of both sides when there have been leadership contests at different points and you have seen it backgrounded out, but there has only been one time in the history of this country that it has played out on the floor of the parliament between the Prime Minister and the one on the same side who wishes he was still Prime Minister!

Those opposite are running a shambles. They have a Senate meeting right now and nobody knows who is meant to get a vote and who is not meant to get a vote! They have a House of Representatives here where every time we come back to Canberra they come up with a new and creative way to show their incompetence! In question time today the government was asked: 'Why didn't you tell the Australian people the Senate was meeting and yet there was a constitutional cloud over who was allowed to vote? Why did you keep something like that a secret?' We did not know until question time today when it was that the Prime Minister found out, but then in answer to questions that we asked it became clear that he knew that there was a fair chance that people who were going to turn up to vote in that chamber were doing so without the authority of the Australian Constitution. He kept it a secret and he did not pair those votes!

This is the short of shambles that happen every time this parliament meets. The only response from the Leader of the House is not to say, 'We will fix the problem,' it is not to say, 'We will get people to turn up for work on time and we will make sure they don't take early marks,' and it is not to say, 'We will make sure people pay attention to what they are voting on or at the very least pay attention to what they are seconding'. The response from the Leader of the House is to say, 'Maybe we'll just have parliament sit less.' It does not matter to him that during those weeks that parliament is sitting government business has been cleared out. Why has it been cleared out? Because they cannot guarantee that their own members will be here. They brought the finishing all the way back to 8 pm and even then they have said, 'By the time you get to 8 pm, when the question is put that the House do now adjourn no-one is allowed to vote on it'. No-one is allowed to vote, because even after bringing the finishing time all the way back to 8 pm they cannot guarantee their own members will turn up.

There was another path. The other option would have been for the Leader of the House to be true to his word, for the Leader of the House to back in the principles that he had when he was in opposition when he was saying how often the parliament should meet. He could have told his own members part of being a member of parliament is, when parliament is on, you have to be here and vote not just take off without letting your whip know. That could have been one of the things that he would do. He could have said, 'When people ask is there any seconder and it is a motion condemning the government, government members probably should not leap to their feet.' He could have given the advice to his own side to say, 'When there is a Labor amendment being put, you're meant to vote no.' But all of that was too complicated for his side of politics. So what he has decided is that, given they do not have an agenda anyway, the easiest thing is to give everybody an early mark, cancel the votes and bring the parliament back as rarely as possible. The hypocrisy embedded in all of this is absolutely breathtaking!

We cannot change the program that is in front of us, but we can make sure that the message is sent loudly and clearly that of what the Leader of the House used to believe there is nothing left. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.