Mark Furner (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to discuss the notice of motion of Senator Abetz. It reads:

That the Senate notes the Prime Minister’s continued unprincipled attacks upon the Senate.

In my view, the Prime Minister’s reference was primarily made concerning the importance of passing the Paid Parental Leave Bill 2010 before the winter break. We on this side of the chamber refute Senator Abetz’s comments about the Prime Minister’s so-called unprincipled attacks upon the Senate. Senator Abetz’s concerns about the Prime Minister’s comment to ‘get out of the way’ are selective and uncalled-for hype. At a press conference held on Tuesday, 15 June, the Prime Minister said:

Get out of the road, guys. Just get on with it.

He said merely that; nothing more intended. However, Senator Abetz’s motion purports to indicate something else. The Prime Minister went on to say:

This is really important, this is really important, it is so key to making life easier for working families.

What a true statement that is. It was so pleasing that the bill was passed by the Senate this afternoon.

If you read the Prime Minister’s comments fully and in context, the implication is not as Senator Abetz puts. I want to refer to some of his quotes, such as a story on Wednesday on the website Australia.to News in which Senator Abetz makes comments that are outrageous, inappropriate and untruthful. He said:

It now seems, according to Mr Rudd that the Senate should not only be a rubber stamp, it should not exist at all!

Mr Rudd is known to channel Mr Whitlam, now it seems he’s reviving Labor’s Whitlam-era position that the Senate should be abolished.

Not once did the Prime Minister make such comments. However, Leader of the Opposition and the opposition in this place have indicated that those comments were made by the Prime Minister. No doubt Senator Abetz’s quote is a blatant lie. It has to be somewhere close to the ‘gospel truth’ that his leader, Tony Abbott, relies upon—no surprise there. Rather, the Prime Minister’s emphasis was on passing the paid parental leave legislation, which will give working mothers the opportunity to stay at home longer and the incentive to return to the workforce.

As a senator on the Community Affairs Legislation Committee and a member of the paid parental leave inquiry, I understand the importance and the urgency of passing this important piece of legislation. I am proud, as someone who was part of the inquiry by that committee, to see it passed this afternoon. This legislation will give Australian families more options to balance work and family by allowing the primary carer, usually the mother, to transfer any unused parental leave pay to their partner, provided they are also eligible.

The Prime Minister was not the only one hoping for this bill to be passed swiftly. In the same press conference, the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, said:

I do also want to say to all of the Senators, now’s the time, now’s the time to vote for this legislation to make sure that it will be available for parents from the first of January next year. For the first time, Australia will catch up with the rest of the world.

We are catching up with the rest of the world. That is what the introduction of this legislation and the success of it today is all about—to bring us up to a standard that the rest of the world is at. She went on to say:

Eighteen weeks paid at the federal minimum wage, paid for by the Government, paid for and budgeted for, we know that this is something that parents have waited a very, very long time for.

At the same press conference, the Prime Minister made reference to the welfare reform bill, which is another piece of legislation we are hoping to have passed by this chamber before we rise for the winter break. Senator Abetz states that the Prime Minister’s remarks are unprincipled. In an interview posted on the Australia.to News website the senator said:

Yesterday Mr Rudd staged a baby-kissing event to call on the Senate to “get out of the way” on paid parental leave.

That was never the intention of the Prime Minister of this country. I take this opportunity now to thank Senator Abetz for moving this motion today, in particular drawing attention to their ineptness and their failings. I have only been here for a short time, not quite two years, but I wonder at times—and it has been mentioned in the chamber today—that the media, the opposition and a combination of people out there in the community blame the government of the day rather than looking at the progress of things in this chamber with an understanding of how this chamber actually works and the opposition we have had to some of the things that we have not got through.

I reflect back on the government’s proposal for a fuelwatch scheme. It was in fact the first inquiry I was on and I distinctly recall, in Perth, Senator Abetz being criticised by the media over there for his opposition to Fuelwatch. Bearing in mind he is from Tasmania, the media portrayed him as being in opposition to it and said therefore he should not have an opinion on it. But that is part of the process of the Senate and the inquiries we are involved in. We scrutinised the legislation and the outcome was not as a result of the good work that the senators did on that inquiry—mainly the senators from this side of the chamber—but came down to the numbers in this chamber. We purely did not have the numbers to pass that legislation, which in my opinion was good legislation with good proposals for the benefit of people in this nation.

I turn my focus to another example of bills that have been rejected in this chamber: the CPRS legislation. I was fortunate enough to be a member of the CPRS and climate change inquiries, which took us to all parts of the country, listening to evidence from communities in the regions and the capitals, and when we handed down the inquiry’s report—and no doubt there was a dissenting report—those opposite opposed it. Following that, there was an opportunity where we felt as a government we were getting close, with the opposition, to making sure that we would get the legislation through. An agreement was drafted with the opposition—and, if you recall, the leader at that stage was none other than Malcolm Turnbull. A deal was done, and what happened was that the rug was pulled from under our feet. The opposition reneged on that deal. With my background and experience, I would call it not bargaining in good faith. Not only did they renege on the deal but also they changed their leadership. It was a shame, in my view, to see that happen but nevertheless that is their issue and that is what they have to bear.

Just to digress slightly, today I was given a document entitled ‘Have your say on climate change’. It appears to be referring to some survey that the opposition is putting out, in particular in my state of Queensland. In the document there is a disgraced and disendorsed Liberal-National Party candidate for the seat of Wright, Hajnal Ban, but in the photograph on the survey there is also a senator from this chamber and the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott. It surprises me that this sort of documentation is going out now when the opposition know full well they opposed climate change and they remain sceptical. They are not prepared even to consider putting forward any proposal to combat our greatest concerns about our climate.

Once again, the government gets the blame for not getting changes through the Senate. Another example is the Australian Building Construction Commission. We put through legislation that was fair and reasonable and, once again, the opposition, along with Senator Fielding, opposed it. They want to make sure they hang on to those shackles of Work Choices, hang on to their history, hang on to a past where they have issues with workers. They should be reminded that they were thrown out of government as a result of Work Choices. They will continue down that path in the lead-up to the election, as the opposition leader did in his response to the budget. They will once again introduce this type of legislation, not titled Work Choices of course but no doubt with the same structure and the same issues that will affect people in our workplaces.

Just yesterday there was another prime example of the obstruction in this chamber. A motion was put forward by the government to extend the hours of the Senate—and this was a type of motion that, if you look back in time, has been suggested on numerous occasions—and once again it was rejected by the opposition with the assistance of Senator Fielding. So, when it comes down to obstruction, the opposition is not fair dinkum.