Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

This motion was moved to allow some time for debate today, in government business time, of a bill that would be subject to a conscience vote in the Senate. This of course does not happen frequently but it is far from unprecedented. As far as I am aware, all parties have agreed that Senator Bob Brown’s Restoring Territory Rights (Voluntary Euthanasia Legislation) Bill 2010 will be subject to a conscience vote. The government has agreed to provide some government business time to debate this bill and we remain committed to the Procedure Committee proposal that the Senate may adopt in relation to private senators’ bills. This additional debate time will allow senators the chance to state their positions on the issue of conscience debates, and issues such as euthanasia are important to the community. This is the first time this government has sought to use government business time for a private senator’s bill since we gained office in 2007.

The Howard government, with the support of the Labor opposition, allowed three private members’ bills to be given wide-ranging and exhaustive debates. The bills that Senator Brown seeks to reverse—the euthanasia bill, the therapeutic goods amendment bill and the prohibition of human cloning bill—were ones that were allowed. Of course, all three bills were debated in government business, all with additional sitting time, with the full support of the Labor opposition. In the case of the euthanasia bill, the Senate sat for an additional five hours to consider the bill. I will not go into the times for the debates on the other bills but they were extensive.

After today there are only four programmed sitting days for the Senate for the remainder of the year. The government, with Senator Bob Brown’s agreement, is seeking a relatively limited amount of time for this bill this year. The government does recognise that this may only be the second episode of the debate on this bill and that the Senate is unlikely to vote on the bill this year. This will leave the Senate free to debate other significant government legislation in the next four sitting days. The Senate should be able to strike a balance— (Time expired)