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

I seek leave to move a motion so that a private senator's bill can be considered under a limitation of debate. As I seek leave, Mr Deputy President, I cannot help but pass comment that this might be your last time in the chair presiding over the chamber. Congratulations and fare thee well.

Leave not granted.

In congratulating you, I hate to give you so much extra pain for your last session in the chair. But, pursuant to contingent notice of motion standing in the name of the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Senator Abetz, I move:

That so much of standing orders be suspended as would prevent me moving a motion to provide for the consideration of a matter—namely, a motion to provide that a private senators' bill be considered under a limitation of debate.

I wish to speak a little bit about the process, and my colleagues Senator Colbeck and Senator Boswell will be speaking about the substance of this motion for the suspension of standing orders. This morning we understood that this bill would be proceeding under difficult time constraints. The bill has not been concluded. Senators were speaking on the bill for lengthy times. We asked in the whips meeting under the private senators' bills arrangements if we could time manage this bill. This was denied. We believe this bill is of considerable importance and we would like to facilitate the passage of this bill through all stages today.

The process that I would like to propose—if the suspension of standing orders is agreed to—is that we take up one hour only of the Senate's time. As you have notified the Senate, Mr Deputy President, Senator Fifield has withdrawn the matter of public importance that was listed for this afternoon in this time slot that we are now speaking in. That motion was withdrawn in consideration of the one hour that would then ensue with this debate. In fact, it may be completed in less than one hour if we can have a time managed debate, which is what we have been seeking from the moment this bill has appeared on the Notice Paper.

Time allotted for private senators' bills is a new thing and in effect this is a trial. You would be aware, as Chair of the Procedure Committee, that we have agreed to some guidelines; however, the guidelines still do not allow for a bill to be completed. This is a bill that the coalition has put forward. We accept that the bill may or may not be passed; that is not the issue. The issue is that we want a bill that is a private senator's bill completed. We want to test the bill on the floor of the chamber. The only way we can do this and effect this bill is by debating this bill today.

I understand from my colleagues that this bill has a time-sensitive aspect—there are some 1 July matters that are impacted by this bill. There are some amendments that Senator Boswell wanted to put forward. We would like to facilitate those amendments going through. Once the bill, in its amended or unamended form, is completed, we would like all stages finished and the bill concluded this afternoon. We are being very generous with our time and our management of this process. We did have an agreement that we would split the time of the private senators' business this morning by allowing, in the two hours and 20 minutes that is allocated, one hour and 10 minutes for Senator Xenophon and one hour and 10 minutes for us. That was an agreement whereby we divided our time, as discussed in our normal whips meetings. This did not eventuate this morning. Senator Xenophon's bill went over­time slightly. There were senators speaking on the bill who, I am sure, had genuine interest, but it was a little bit dispro­portionate. There were a number of additional Labor senators scheduled to speak compared to the opposition.

Again, we indicated that we would like speakers to be kept to a minimum to enable that bill to progress—allowing sufficient debate—and Senator McLucas in the committee stage did ask some detailed and probing questions which were answered quite well, I think, by Senator Xenophon supported by the Greens. If private senators' business time will not facilitate the carriage of a bill through to its final stages—again, not determining the outcome of the bill but allowing the bill to reach its final stage so that we can vote upon the bill—then we are wasting our time by having private senators' bills debated without a logical conclusion.

The whips meetings have been very congenial in many respects in allowing many matters to take place. We would agree that under private senators' bills arrangements that, if there are more complex matters, we would allow longer debate. We get one shot at this every sitting Thursday, and some of these bills could then roll over into consecutive Thursdays. So it may take several weeks to get a private senator's bill passed through the chamber. They are the issues that we are concerned about in relation to the process, and I would urge all senators to support us in facilitating one hour of debate for this private senator's bill.