Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Here we are on the Tuesday in the last week of sitting and we are getting an hours motion just for tonight. We still do not know what the government finally intends to do for the rest of this week to get their agenda through. Yesterday we had five rearrangements of government business. Today we have had a rearrangement from the draft to the red. How many times is the business of the Senate going to be rearranged while the government makes up its mind about what it wants? How many other bills are going to be coming in? We are going to be having a discussion about exempting bills from the cut-off order, as we were yesterday for the Labor 2013-14 Budget Savings (Measures No. 2) Bill 2015, which we are now expected to discuss as well. We hear rumours about other bills that other ministers want through.

So here we are in the final week. We did not manage any of the business last week. We are expected to sit late because the adjournment is endless tonight—not endless, sorry. It is unlimited hours. I always call it the 'endless' adjournment. Whips tend to do that, folks, because it does feel like that. It certainly feels that way when you are still here at 12 or one o'clock in the morning. There is an unlimited adjournment tonight, so we will be sitting very late. The expectation from government, I presume, is that they still want other bills through and they expect us to be sitting here late on Thursday. This happens every year. The government know that they need to manage these bills through this process, and yet they leave it till 12.30, as we sit here on a Tuesday, to say, 'You are going to be sitting late tonight.'

We do not know what the agenda will be, because, as I said, it changes all the time. Maybe we are going for a record here. Yesterday, from my experience here, was a record in terms of the number of times that government business changed order. Tonight we are supposed to be debating the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015 as a special bill when it is listed at No. 2 on the red. What does the government want? Do they want to debate it at No. 2, or do they want to debate it late tonight? In fact, have they put that on specially tonight because they think no-one will be listening? The government have had plenty of opportunities to map out their agenda, to not rush this process and to be clear about what they wanted to get through the Senate: which urgent bills, which budget bills and which special bills actually need to get through tonight. And yet we still have not seen that agenda.

I suspect that on Thursday morning we are going to get another hours motion to say we will sit endlessly on Thursday night, with no limit. The Greens will not be supporting this hours motion. The government has had plenty of time to get its act together, to get its agenda dealt with through this place. We will not be supporting this hours motion.