Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

The government will be opposing this motion for a number of reasons, both process reasons and issues of substance. In terms of the process, we are very much used to the crossbench objecting to a range of practices that they have themselves used today in seeking to move this motion and seeking to have these bills brought on for debate. I have personally had conversations with the members of the crossbench who are moving this motion and who are doing exactly the things that they complain about government and opposition senators doing. It is rather disappointing to see those crossbench members engaging in exactly the same kind of behaviour that they say is completely out of line any time the government does it.

What am I talking about? For starters, to my knowledge, we received no notice whatsoever of this motion being put.

Senator Lambie, you might think that's a laughing matter, but I know what would happen if we came into the chamber and tried to move a motion like this without giving you any notice of that. It is pretty unfortunate and, I would say, rude to move that sort of motion without the courtesy of providing notice of that motion. That's the first thing that this motion does that is apparently not okay when the government does it.

Secondly, it seeks to guillotine debate. We know that the crossbench always object—or say they object—any time there is a suggestion that debate should be guillotined. Thirdly, and probably more importantly, what this motion seeks to do is to bring on for debate and passage legislation that is actually currently being considered by a Senate inquiry. I would have thought that the proper process is to allow that Senate inquiry to report.

And the minister has already flagged that he will be making amendments based on evidence that has come forward in that Senate inquiry, and that is being capably led, I know, by Senator Sheldon. So why the crossbench thinks that it's okay to seek to pass legislation that is currently being considered by a Senate inquiry is beyond me, but maybe that's something we should think about doing something in the future as well! But we actually have more respect for the Senate processes than it seems certain people do, in moving this motion.

Fourthly, what this motion does is seek to pass legislation that was only introduced this week. We know that there's a longstanding convention that legislation is not passed the same week as it's introduced unless there are truly exceptional circumstances. So I'm pretty surprised and pretty disappointed that crossbench members who like to hold themselves out as the guardians of Senate practice have in four ways completely ignored that Senate practice in order to try to pass this motion.

But, beyond those process reasons, there are also good reasons of substance to oppose this motion. For starters, it seeks to prolong debit on these bills beyond the usual allocation of private senators' time. There is no reason that these bills couldn't be handled in the usual way, in the usual allocation of private senators' bills. Again, there's a longstanding convention in this place for private senators' time to be allocated, and we've always facilitated that. It's there in the agenda today. There's an hour and 10 minutes available for the debate of these bills. But what this motion seeks to do is to extend debate and further eat into government business time, which will impede us considering and passing very important legislation for the country.

This week we've spent the entire week debating one piece of legislation, being the sea dumping bill, and we'll now—

If you're suggesting we should guillotine it, maybe you should talk to your leader.