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

For the benefit of the House: a few moments ago the Prime Minister made it clear that there was no interest in having a joint approach to referrals to the High Court. The Labor Party will now be circulating in the chamber a resolution—and the crossbench have just indicated their willingness to have an opportunity to vote for a resolution—that would refer to the High Court the members for Batman, Braddon, Fremantle, Longman, Mayo, Chisholm, Mitchell, Forrest and Mackellar.

For a number of those members the government will say they are absolutely confident of their position, and for a number of those members we will say we are absolutely confident of their position, but we cannot have a situation where the government has been delaying the referrals until the new member for New England comes in, legally elected for the first time. This has to be resolved in a sensible way. We cannot have a situation where the governments cuts out any opportunity for a cooperative approach to references to the High Court. It can't be only one side of politics that gets referred.