Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian Labor Party will not be supporting this amendment, though I do wish to acknowledge the points raised by the Greens about the issues around school holidays. In terms of the process, we accept the longstanding convention that the government of the day has the right to determine the sitting pattern for the government. However, I think it would be useful in future to consider having some negotiation beforehand because I think the issues Senator Siewert raised about family friendly policies should be discussed openly in this place and maintained.

While rejecting the Greens amendment and supporting the government because we have had the longstanding process of accepting the government's proposals on sitting patterns, we do wish to put on the record that—as we were told many times in this place by the opposition of the day—by accepting this sitting pattern we expect there will be a degree of certainty about it and that people will be able to make plans around it. Should any request come forward from the government to the opposition around extended hours or extended sitting weeks, we will be raising the same points about how important it is that we have that certainty, and there can be no guarantee of any agreement to requests for extensions in this place. It would be, as we say, 'in exceptional circumstances', with a real case put forward, that we would consider such a request. However, as we ought, we are saying that the government of the day has put forward their proposed sitting pattern, we have it in front of us, we accept that and will support that.