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

The opposition will be supporting this motion because we take the principle that the government has the right to set the order of business. However, it is passing strange that this is the second time today that we have had a request from the government to change the order of business from the Senate red that we had when we all came into this place today. I acknowledge that the Manager of Government Business did tell us that this is what he wanted to do, but having already had one request for a change in the order of business, it seems odd that we are not able to get through the whole day without having another. The people on our side were all prepared to go through with the debate this evening on the Health Workforce Australia Bill and the Australian National Preventive Health Agency (Abolition) Bill as listed on the red this morning. We were ready to go into that debate this afternoon. Also, the community affairs committee was requested to have its report in this evening so that we would be able to progress that process tonight. It is confusing that we are again being asked to go along with a request and we do not know why. It makes the red we get in the morning almost redundant. It is as if we should come in here in the morning and say, 'Hey government, what do you want us to do now?' We have no warning about what we need to do. This is not the way to run business. As the Manager of Government Business knows full well—after telling us for years—every time a motion came in from a manager of government business in the past we were lectured about our inability to run the affairs of the chamber. It was a regular occurrence. I have a number of former managers of government business behind me who have a record of being told they were not up to the job.