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

I indicate that the opposition will also not be supporting the motion by the Manager of Government Business in the Senate. All year we have been reiterating and echoing the sentiments of Senator Brown that there have not been enough sitting weeks allocated for this year, and we flagged that early enough for the government to have changed it. We invited the government to increase the number of sitting weeks this year at an early stage when we could have planned. We cannot now plan additional weeks for the final throes of this year because of commitments that we build around the parliamentary sitting calendar from a very early time. Incidentally, I flagged with the chamber when the calendar for 2010 was introduced into this chamber that, again, not enough sitting weeks were included on that schedule. The government needs to consider increasing the number of sitting weeks at an early enough stage so senators can plan, as Senator Brown rightly says, their electoral activities around the parliamentary sitting schedule. We cannot do ad hoc arrangements on a constant basis.

The other thing that I have mentioned during various debates on extensions of hours throughout the year has been that we are going to stop cooperating with the government on extending on an ad hoc basis when the sitting schedule is so low. I give to the chamber an indication of how generous the opposition has been in relation to sitting hours this entire year—and also last year. I give some statistics about how this has happened. In 2008 we gave up 83 hours and 54 minutes for the consideration of government business in addition to the scheduled time that the government had arranged. That was 83 hours of time that the opposition could have used fairly constructively in prosecuting the case that the opposition has against the government. So far in 2009, without the year even having been completed, we have given up 68 hours and 12 minutes for additional government business because of one simple fact: the government has failed to allocate enough sitting weeks for the Senate to properly consider its business.

Here we are again at the very end of the sitting year. If we roll over again and say, ‘Yes, you can have additional time,’ what is gong to happen next year? Next year there will be no additional weeks. The government will come and say, ‘Okay, let’s crib the opposition’s time and use that for government business because the opposition have been so generous in helping to facilitate the legislative program through this chamber’—which is not our responsibility. Our responsibility is to fit in with the sitting schedule as it is and debate within the full parameters of the sitting schedule, not to increase the sitting schedule on an ad hoc basis or give up valuable opposition time. In 2008 we gave up the equivalent of 4½ weeks of government business time to the government, and in 2009 we have currently given up about 3¾ weeks for the government. The opposition has played ball a long time with this, and this is not the first warning; I have fired shots across the manager’s bow on several occasions starting from May or June this year. In coming now, at the last minute, to ask for additional hours the opposition will not support you.