Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Madam Acting Deputy President, the coalition will be asking that you put the question separately on the first procedural element of the motion just put by the Parliamentary Secretary for Social Inclusion that these bills may proceed without formalities. I wish to speak to this procedural motion. The coalition wish to continue—and I am sure other senators would be of like mind—with the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009. This bill is in the final stages of the second reading debate. It will then move into the committee stage and will then be finalised. The government needs this bill completed to provide certainty—as would the coalition—for people who will be affected by this commencing in 2010.

The government proposes to move straight into the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme bills, which then pauses or halts the continuation of this legislation, the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009. If that happens, potentially we may not get back to that bill to complete that matter, and it would be foolhardy for us not to consider that bill when it has gone so far through the process and is nearing completion.

To be fair to the government, this morning we flagged at a very early stage with the office of the Manager of Government Business that we wished to do this. We wanted to give the Manager of Government Business the opportunity to facilitate the continuation of the social security and other legislation amendment bill. We had that request declined. After the declining of that request, we also offered to give up a matter of public importance that the opposition had lodged appropriately with the Table Office this morning at 8.30. That would then have facilitated an extra hour of debate for the social security bill. The government refused this request also.

We have gone out of our way to assist the government in allowing the finalisation of legislation that is basically complete, but the government through what seems to be its stupidity—I do not know what it is—wants to jump straight out of that bill into the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill when the legislation does not even start until 1 July 2011. I do not know why it will not finish off one piece of legislation which is near completion. For that reason and for that reason only—to finalise it and to put at rest the community’s anxiousness about the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009—we have been forced to use this measure so that the government can continue on with the social security amendment bill, and then debate on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill can be commenced tomorrow.