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

I rise to make a few comments. I will not take up the chamber's time except to say that, after what has been a rather chaotic week in terms of hours and arrangements to extend hours, the opposition will support this motion to enable and facilitate some of the government's urgent bills that need to be dealt with by the end of this year. I think that, at the meeting that was held yesterday to discuss this, everyone in this chamber agreed to facilitate the program today and to enable those bills to be concluded.

I would also point out that this is the second week that the opposition has had to give up time that was allocated for our business in order to facilitate the government's business. Although the manager has acknowledged that fact, I think it is important to note that, of the 10 or so bills—I think there were about eight done last week and six that are being sought to be dealt with today—the majority will have been done in what was the opposition's allocated time. We are agreeing to do that because of the time urgency of the bills, despite some of the other deals that were done for extending hours this week, which did not have the opposition's support.

Question agreed to.