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

The opposition was very keen to work to ensure that this important legislation came to the chamber and could be concluded as quickly as possible. We knew that there was a great deal of interest in this bill because of the importance of the money flowing through to the local governments. They have expressed their interest in that. We also know that there were many speakers who wanted to be part of this debate, so it is important that we go through that.

We want to put on record very clearly, though, that, in terms of private senators' business, we are committed to ensuring that private senators' business does get the consideration it should have in our program. So this is not going to be a regular offer, as the government should understand; this was for a particular purpose.

We were concerned that there was not enough work being done by the government to ensure that this was being brought forward for debate, so we are putting on record that we think this is important. We acknowledge the pressure that has been put on by community members to ensure that we consider this bill and put it through quickly so that the House can consider it and we can look at what we can do with the process.

We acknowledge that it is the role of the government to determine the schedule of business. We will work cooperatively with the government when we can. But we think it was important that we actually offer this up at this time to allow the process to continue.