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

Labor will not be supporting the suspension of standing orders or, indeed, the motion that the government has put in this place at this late hour on a Wednesday evening. I just pick up the point that the Leader of the Government in the Senate has raised in his address, which is the urgent nature of these bills. I would like to remind senators that these bills have been before this parliament for some 18 months now. They have been listed for debate on no less than 10 occasions. There is absolutely no merit at all to the argument that these are urgent and have to be dealt with tonight or, indeed, this sitting week.

Nothing has changed since the time it was listed for debate in the House and in the Senate. Indeed, this week it was listed for debate on Monday, when the government has several hours to debate government legislation, and then it was pulled off two minutes into the dinner break. There was an rearrangement, and other bills were put in its place. Indeed there were, I think, four other non-urgent bills dealt with by the Senate when we could have been dealing with this and allowing for a reasonable debate during normal sitting hours of this place.

This government is incapable of managing its program. Time and time again we find ourselves in a second sitting week, once last-minute negotiations have been held, deals done and money put on the table, with no scrutiny of those deals, and we are informed that we will be sitting until midnight or 11.00 pm—and who knows what will happen tomorrow if the government gets its way.

This is the sixth time this year that the government has had a motion to vary the hours of the Senate, with little or no notice to other senators. It's no way to run the Senate and no way to run the government. This bill, as I said, was first introduced in March 2016, 18 months ago. It's been listed for debate on no fewer than 10 occasions in this chamber, and now the minister wants us to change sitting hours to sit late into the night because the government's finally ready to debate it and have a vote on it.