Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the comments of the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Senator Wong. What a surprise it is tonight to see the government has finally managed to secure a deal with the crossbench. We are yet to see what the results of that deal are. We have just heard some assurances from Senator Xenophon that it will all be very positive, but we simply will not have the time tonight to work that out.

This procedural motion in response to Senator Brandis's motion tells us a few things about this government. Firstly, it is that they have failed to manage their legislation program effectively. That is clear. We have been seeing that ever since the election. Secondly, it is that they have failed to manage their speakers. We have seen this today. For a government that supposedly is in such a hurry to get this bill dealt with, we have seen government speakers added to speaking lists. We have had Senator Macdonald speak at length, I think, a number of times today, giving full 20-minute speeches on things with the government supposedly wanting to prioritise this bill.

We have also seen signs of a government that fails to engage with parties and representatives of parties they are not doing a deal with. We had no idea this was coming on tonight. We had no notice. It has been made clear to me that, for the smooth functioning of this chamber, it requires the parties in this place to work together, to provide notice where they can and to let people know what is going on. You hear rumours in this building, but it was not until Senator Brandis walked in tonight and tabled this motion that we were afforded the courtesy of finding out how this government is intending to deal with this bill—and that is that we are going to sit here until it is done, without the opportunity to go through any amendments that have been agreed to between the crossbench and the government. We will sit through the night—working on our feet to work out what these amendments mean. We have our own amendments to work through. Over the last year we have heard about how important this bill is. It has been before this chamber twice and been rejected, and it has been the subject of a double dissolution election, after which it mysteriously went missing. It has been in the missing persons unit, or the missing legislation unit, for the last six months. Then it appears, gets listed and we are told that it will be dealt with all in one day—despite us trying to engage. We know that our shadow minister has been trying to engage proactively with the government, saying that we wanted to work with them on the amendments we put. We can see that there was no interest at all in that approach. We have a government that has done some dirty deals, and this is a dirty deal—we do not know what it is about, we will not have the time to scrutinise it, and we are not prepared to take Senator Xenophon's word that it will be a great outcome.

It just shows again how the government are prepared to treat this place once it locks in the numbers—once the numbers are there, the rest of you can go and get stuffed—chuck out good procedure, chuck out communication, chuck out good process and chuck out the collaboration that, for the most part, works in this place on a day-to-day basis; instead, we are going to ram this through and make legislation in the early hours of the morning when people have not been given the right time or afforded the courtesy or the opportunity to work through the detail of the deal that has been locked in over the last couple of days. That is not how good legislation is made. That is not how important bills that come to this place should be dealt with.

Today, when I moved an amendment to the disallowance motion, I had all these comments across the chamber about, 'We didn't know about this; we didn't get advice.' I understood that the way it worked here was that you provide people with the opportunity and the information on what you are doing. I did that before question time today. Unfortunately, the same courtesy has not been provided to the opposition. There has been no engagement on this. Senator Brandis walking in and slapping down a motion as soon as they have locked in the numbers is not good enough. This is an important bill, there are political differences around it and it has been highly contentious. It is thoroughly inappropriate that the handling of this bill should be dealt with in the way that the government intends to, just because they have done a deal that none of us are party to. That is why we will be opposing this motion when it is put substantively.