Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the following from occurring in relation to proceedings on the Climate Change Bill 2022 and the Climate Change (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2022:

(1) there being a second reading debate on both bills together, and, from the conclusion of the Matter of Public Importance on Wednesday 3 August 2022, the time limit for Members speaking on the debate being 10 minutes;

(2) the second reading debate continuing until either:

(a) no further Members rise to speak; or

(b) a Minister requires that the debate be adjourned at no earlier than 10 pm;

at which point, debate being adjourned and the House immediately adjourning until Thursday 4 August at 9 am;

(3) from 9 pm on 3 August if, in the opinion of a Minister, the number of speakers remaining on the debate means the House will sit unreasonably late, the Minister requiring the time limit for second reading speeches be reduced to 5 minutes;

(4) during the sitting of Thursday 4 August, the bills being called on together and then without delay one question being put on any amendments moved to motions for the second readings and one question being put on the second readings of the bills;

(5) the consideration in detail stages on the bills, if required, being taken together, with any detail amendments to be moved together, with:

(a) one question to be put on all government amendments;

(b) one question to be put on all opposition amendments; and

(c) separate questions then to be put on any sets of amendments moved by crossbench Members;

and one question to be put that the bill/s [ as amended] be agreed to.

(6) should a Minister require, any question provided for under paragraph (5) being put after no less than 10 minutes of debate on each set of amendments;

(7) at the conclusion of the detail stage, one question being put on the third readings of the bills together; and

(8) any variation to this arrangement being made only on a motion moved by a Minister.

First of all, I can explain that, in consultation, there has been a request that we use a slightly different procedure this evening to what is in the standing orders when a bill is declared urgent. I'll explain what the differences are, but I'll first of all explain the reason that has been requested.

The first reason it has been requested is with respect to the second reading debate. We have an unusually large number of people of all different opinions on these bills, who would regard these bills and the issues within them as critical to how they sought election to be in this place. People have asked for a higher level of flexibility to make sure that people get to speak on the second reading.

The second thing is, in trying to minimise the number of amendments, some people have suggested, particularly with respect to the crossbench, that, rather than people moving separate amendments in order for each of them to be able to make a speech at the amendments stage, if we had a limited time where there could be some discussion on each amendment, then, for this particular legislation, that would be a more appropriate mechanism.

If this is carried, then the changes go as follows. The first thing is that the bills I referred to become the only bills that we debate for the rest of the day, once we hit the end of the MPI. That's when this is activated. The second thing is that speaking times, from the end of the MPI, get knocked back to 10 minutes. After 9 pm we'll have a look at the speaking list. If it looks like we're still going to finish within a reasonable period—and at the moment it doesn't—we'll let it run at 10-minute speeches. If not, a minister can inform the House that the speaking times are going down to five minutes, to try to maximise the number of people who speak.

Then, instead of 10 pm being a hard cut-off, the minister would be allowed to effectively make a decision as to whether it is becoming an absurdly late night or whether we're actually close to the end and just letting a few more people speak to go a little bit beyond 10 o'clock is a reasonable call. So both the judgement on the reduction in speaking times and the judgement on finishing times would be made by the minister at the table, which I suspect will be either the Minister for Climate Change or me. But the decisions would be made on that basis. Once again I give the undertaking to the House that I gave yesterday. The capacity for this sort of thing to be changed by a motion moved by a minister has always been there in debate management motions, and this has only ever been done in a cooperative manner, and there is no intention to do anything other than that.

Tomorrow morning, when this bill is brought on, we would immediately have the second reading vote, and we would then go through the amendments. For each amendment, rather than it being only the mover, there would be a minimum time of 10 minutes for each amendment. This effectively allows each amendment to be put, with the mover and one or two others able to speak. We'd be able to do that in a sensible fashion. It means that these bills will have been dealt with in the House, through all stages, well before we hit question time tomorrow. That's what it means.

In anticipation of being told that this is a terrible exercise of democracy and involves the total disruption of debate, I just want to give you the example of what happened last night, because it speaks to what we're looking at now. Last night, every time I turned up the volume—and I'll accept I had moments of the evening on mute—I would hear people open their speech by explaining that they had been silenced. They would then continue to go on for 10 minutes about how they had been silenced. I remember what it was like to be silenced. The microphone gets turned off on you and no-one else gets to speak. But last night we had speaker after speaker tell us how bad it was that they weren't allowed to be heard. We had one member last night, the member for Flynn, open his speech by saying how outrageous it was that it was now only 10 minutes and he wasn't allowed to speak for 15. The member for Flynn finished after eight minutes. Then, after all the conversation that we had yesterday from those opposite saying that the 10 pm finish time was exactly the same as the gag, that it made no difference at all, they ran out of speakers at quarter to 10. Everybody who wanted to speak was able to. Every single person who wanted to put their views on the record was able to. With the procedures we've got on these bills, there is actually a greater opportunity to speak than there was last night, because we've got the option of reducing the speaking time further if required. We're effectively going down to 10 minutes immediately after the MPI; whereas last night we did it shortly before 6 pm. Sensible decisions can be made in terms of the 10 pm cut-off if there are only a few speakers left beyond that.

Compare that to a minister just coming in without notice and moving that the question be put and everybody on the speaking list suddenly getting to say nothing, where we then spend—as we used to—sometimes an hour and a half voting on whether or not people would get to talk, and you would lose an hour and a half that could in fact have been used as parliamentary debating. I have no doubt that there will be many speeches that will happen tonight where I won't like what they say—good! That's what this room is meant to allow. That's what this room has not allowed for nine years.

I want to thank the different members, both across the aisle and on the crossbench, who have engaged with this. I won't pretend that when you are trying to get bills dealt with that you end up with a perfect situation, but I will say that what is in front of us now is better as a result of that consultation, and so I thank those who have been involved with it. I will also say what is happening now is a world away from what this parliament has been like for nearly a decade. I commend the motion to the House.

I will listen with bemusement to the speeches that follow as I get told that somehow allowing people to spend their time explaining why no-one is allowed to be heard is identical to a situation where no-one got to say a word. We've been there. We've got the majority in the House now to behave exactly the same way. We choose not to for a really simply reason: we believe in the parliament and we're not afraid of hearing opposing voices. We think that's a healthy thing to do and I only wish it had been this way for a longer period of time.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The opposition does oppose this motion that has been put by the Leader of the House to manage this debate. That's the code for reducing speaking time and materially and particularly reducing the operation of the consideration in detail process.

Again, I say to the House—as I issued a warning last week—when the Leader of the House is using his reasonable voice it's important to scrutinise very carefully what, in fact, he is putting to the House, because substantively this is yet another use of the gag procedures that the government has adopted. Notwithstanding the rhetoric from the Leader of the House in his previous role and the rhetoric from the Prime Minister in his previous role of the past few years, what we're now seeing is the use of procedures where the executive government determines a much compressed speaking time.

We heard from the Leader of the House about the generous way in which he has provided for everybody who might possibly want to speak to speak. Of course, what he didn't highlight so much in what he had to say was that the normal speaking times of 15 minutes will be compressed to 10 and then they can be further compressed to five, and that means that people don't have the chance to make out the arguments in the detail that they would ordinarily want.

Particularly I would highlight the, frankly, quite disgraceful crunching down of the procedures that would normally apply for consideration in detail. Consideration in detail, of course, is the process that is normally used in this House for amendments to be moved. They can be moved by any member. Also during that process questions of detail can be put to a minister—during the consideration in detail phase. The standing orders provide that any member can speak for five minutes to raise a question, make a point. The standing orders also provide that there is no limit on that. That's intended to allow an examination of amendments that are proposed, either by government or by opposition or by crossbenchers, and a full and detailed back and forth. The Leader of the House told us that, very generously, what he was now proposing is to allow a grand total of 10 minutes for each amendment. That is a very, very substantial compression of what normally would be available under the standing orders. I say to the crossbench in particular that the changes that were put to you—the new processes in relation to bills declared urgent—were put to you before most members of the current crossbench have had the opportunity to participate in a parliamentary debate involving the consideration-in-detail process. That means that you are essentially being asked to agree to changes at a time when you might not have had the opportunity to experience exactly how that process works when the parliament is doing its work as it should. I also make the point to the crossbench that what's before the House now is not a use of standing order 85—I accept and agree with that—but it is a motion that replicates a great many of the provisions of standing order 85, with some changes, as the Leader of the House has informed us. But that means there is an opportunity for all of us in this House to consider again, on its merits, the mechanism that is being proposed and consider whether it is in fact appropriate, in view of the fact that there are, as is evident, a large number of people wanting to speak on this, wanting to express views and, very possibly, wanting to move amendments.

The Leader of the House has presented this in terms of the government being extraordinarily reasonable and making every possible effort for people to have the opportunity to speak. The constraint here is an artificial one. The constraint is that this government has come up with a sitting timetable involving 40 sitting days. That is a record low number of sitting days, even for an election year, if you go back and look at the record of recent years. So this is a constraint that the government has imposed on itself, because it's minimised the number of days of sitting for this parliament, and, as a consequence, we are now seeing members constrained in the time that they have to participate in debate.

Don't look just to my words to assess the veracity of what I am saying. Let me give you some other observations that have been made on this topic over the years:

… this is a chamber made up of people's representatives and it is constituted for the purposes of discussion, scrutiny and debate of legislation and other important matters …

Here are some words that might well be appropriate to be used tomorrow morning: 'I do not think anyone can pretend that a bill that was introduced yesterday and is now going to be rammed through is going to have any of the scrutiny that this parliament is here to provide.' Here is another quote: 'The parliament should be given the opportunity to ensure that these bills actually give effect to their intended purpose,' or, 'On the issue of general scrutiny and general governance, it is the interest and responsibility of every single member of this place.' That is a statement with which I hope everybody in this House would agree. Every one of those observations came from the Leader of the House when he was in another role in this place.

I say to the House: the role of the parliament is important. The role of the parliament in scrutinising legislation, in holding the government to account, and in putting forward amendments—if it's the judgement that amendments are required—is important. I also say to the House that what's been proposed by the Leader of the House is neither necessary nor desirable. What should happen is that the parliament should consider this bill using its normal procedures: giving all who want to speak the opportunity to do so for the normal speaking time of 15 minutes; and giving all who want to the opportunity to move amendments and to have them considered in the consideration-in-detail process that normally applies in this parliament. The fact that that is not being done is very unfortunate. It is, in substantive terms, the second use within the first two sitting weeks of this parliament of this new gag mechanism where the government has used its numbers to give itself the power to do this.

I say to the House that that is unfortunate, is to be regretted and is not consistent with the high-minded rhetoric we've heard from the Prime Minister and from the Leader of the House in relation to how they will be bringing in a new kind of gentler politics. In fact, what we're seeing is, in substantive terms, a gag being applied that is very much to be regretted. It is not necessary. There is more than adequate time to debate this bill using the normal processes. Those are the reasons why the opposition will not be supporting this motion.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have three quick responses to issues that were just raised by the Manager of Opposition Business. First of all, he had a quote from me referring to a bill that had only been introduced the day before. Well, I don't know how that's relevant to this debate. I don't get the connection there to this debate. I'm sure there are other quotes to pick, but my suggestion is he could try to pick ones that are vaguely relevant to what's in front of us.

Secondly, an example was given about the difference in consideration in detail. What used to happen wasn't that you got 10 minutes to speak on an amendment and wasn't that you got five minutes to speak on an amendment. It used to be that, when he was sitting on this side, you didn't even get to move the amendment. It wasn't even put to the House. So if we have come up with a mechanism which allows there to be a mover moving amendments, many of which we will not agree with, so there can be discussion in the House before the vote, and the House gets to make a decision, we make no apology for that. We make no apology for using a democratically elected House for democratic purposes.

Finally, in the examples the Manager of Opposition just gave, he gave the game away at the end when he said, 'We should just keep the normal processes: 15-minute speeches.' Do you know what that means? It means we don't make a decision this month. It means we don't make a decision next month. It means what those opposite are asking for actually has nothing to do with procedure. They spent nine years wanting to make sure that we don't make a decision on action on climate change. Right now, the only reason they are opposing the debate management motion that's in front of us is because it says we're going to make a decision on action on climate change this week. That's what this motion decides. To those opposite: go for it! If they want to vote against making a decision this week, they should just know that I don't know what message they thought they were given during the election campaign, but it's odd to listen to the Australian people and say, 'Oh, what they're wanting is for us to continue to delay acting on climate change.' It's a very strange message to be hearing, particularly when you consider the seat that the Manager of Opposition Business represents.

But if those opposite want to vote in a moment that we don't take any action on climate change this week, go for it. It's their democratic right, and I will always defend the democratic rights of members of this chamber, even when they are so determined to be wrong.

Ian Goodenough (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Question agreed to.