Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That, on Tuesday, 17 November 2009:

(a)

the hours of meeting shall be 12.30 pm to 6.30 pm and 7 pm to 11.40 pm;

(b)

the routine of business from 7 pm shall be government business only; and

(c)

the question for the adjournment of the Senate shall be proposed at 11 pm.

The motion today is in order to facilitate debate on the carbon pollution reduction package of bills this week. All senators would be aware that the government and the opposition are actively and constructively seeking to reach agreement on a range of amendments on this package. While these negotiations continue, the Senate can complete the bulk of the second reading debate this week with the committee stage of the bill left to the later half of next week. As I understand it, there is a broad view that it is likely to need to be dealt with in the opposition party room in the next week. Of course, this will allow time for the negotiations to be completed and any agreement, should it be reached, to be considered by the opposition party room, as I have indicated, early next week. The Senate could then move to the committee stage after consideration of amendments by the opposition party room.

If necessary, the government is also prepared to extend the sitting hours next week to allow the committee stage to be finalised in that second week. The motion provides for additional hours only for this evening. If still more hours are required to allow senators to speak on the second reading debate, I could foreshadow that I will also be moving a motion for the usual extension on Thursday to provide for additional sitting hours on Thursday night. Perhaps, if required, we could also seek to utilise Friday. This is a usual matter that arises when we head towards the end of the sitting period.

With this timetable all senators will have the opportunity to speak on the second reading debate for the carbon pollution reduction package of bills. This allows the Senate a considerable amount of time to consider the CPRS package in second reading and next week the committee stage. It is important that the Senate is able to give proper consideration to this significant package of bills. It also provides time for other matters that are usually dealt with during this period to be programmed in.

The Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Evans, wrote to the Senate leaders and Senator Xenophon last week. He outlined the government’s intentions as to how the CPRS package would be managed in the remainder of 2009. No formal responses have been received to this letter, although I would note that Senator Brown has written seeking additional sitting hours. The government is seeking to implement the additional hours and the program that we have outlined in the correspondence. On the basis of the request from Senator Brown, I do hope that the Greens will be supporting this motion today. It would be consistent with the position that the Greens have sought which is to ensure that we can deal with the second reading debate for the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and consistent with allowing additional hours for the Senate to debate it.

Providing additional hours for legislation is not uncommon in the Senate, particularly for significant packages, nor is it uncommon for the Senate to sit for additional hours at the end of a sitting period to accommodate debate on bills. Additional hours and days have proved to be a more successful method of focusing the Senate’s attention on government legislation at the end of sittings. If we were to add regular sitting days—and there is always that suggestion—we would find the days were largely taken up with, in part, machinery matters, matters that deal with notice of motions, matters that deal with MPIs with, in many circumstances, less than half of the time available allocated for government legislation before the chamber. Indeed, that is exactly what is occurring this week. The opposition has insisted in the last couple of sitting periods on having MPIs every day and it is indicating that it will continue this practice. It has provided additional speakers on bills and committee reports and also ensured that certain bills have extensive debate in the committee stage. In short, the view is that when you can provide a significant amount of time such as a Tuesday night to allow second reading debates then you can focus the Senate on dealing with the legislation. It also provides senators with a contemporaneous debate rather than a fragmented debate throughout the week.

It concerns me that the opposition may simply be seeking to waste the Senate’s time. The Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Senator Minchin, does not agree with his leader on climate change and it does concern me that we do need to get on with the debate of the CPRS. I would also seek Senator Brown’s assistance, along with that of Senator Xenophon and Senator Fielding, to ensure that we can allow the second reading debate on the CPRS legislation to be held this week.

This motion is of course up for open and transparent debate and I would ask all to support it. I commend the motion to extend the sitting hours to the Senate. It allows for a practical approach for the consideration of this CPRS package of bills so the Senate can, in its usual way, work through that package of bills as outlined. This is not an unusual package in terms of the hours and how we will proceed with this debate. It is something that we in opposition agreed to on many occasions with the previous government to be able to deal with large bills that had significant speaking lists in a way that ensured they got dealt with during the available time.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wrote to the Prime Minister on behalf of the Greens in September and then again in October recommending extra sitting weeks for the Senate be considered by the government, before we got to the situation we are now in. You will be aware, Madam Acting Deputy President, that this is one of the shortest sitting schedules for a non-election year since the Second World War, even though we have huge issues to deal with on behalf of the nation. I have received no response from the Prime Minister at all. I have received two letters from the leader in the Senate, but neither of them responded to the proposal to have an extra sitting week last week or indeed extra sitting weeks at the start of December. The government effectively ignored a very sensible proposal that we deal with the coming load in a considered way. When I say ‘considered’ I am taking into account that all of us have big electoral commitments. We need to keep those commitments with our electorates. We do not need to be working on an ad hoc basis where we do not know whether we are going to be able to make those commitments. It disrupts a whole lot of other people’s lives as well as our own. However, at the end of each year you get extra pressure put onto the Senate, and we tend to sit extended hours.

The reality here is that we are waiting—perhaps till the weekend, as Senator Ludwig pointed out—for a decision by the government and coalition to come together to put to the parliament a rejigged emissions trading scheme package of legislation, and we do not know what that outcome will be. The proposal here is that we have the second reading debate on legislation that we are not acquainted with. We know what the government wants; we do not know what outcome there will be from the government and the coalition. We have already had it flagged that agriculture will be dropped from the legislation, and we can assume that will be the case. But we cannot debate that, because it is not in the legislation before us. In fact it says in the legislation before us that agriculture will be considered by 2013 and included by 2015, if that consideration points to it being included as part of the reach of this legislation.

We are in the extraordinary situation of being about to embark on a debate about legislation which is far from finalised, which we do not have before us and which we cannot, I put to you, Madam Acting Deputy President, sensibly debate in this circumstance. Why is that? It is because the executive—that is, the Prime Minister’s office—has a schedule of negotiating with the opposition which is going on extramural, outside the Senate, but without the Senate being informed. We are being treated as a necessary routine to go through but not the equal second house of the parliament which is the watchdog of the people’s interests, and I object to that. I also object to not getting a response from the government on a matter as important as the scheduling of the Senate when a sensible, more contemplated, far-sighted proposition was put to the government by the Greens a month or two months ago. We are not going to be simply subservient to the government in this adhockery. We will not be supporting this motion. There is no cogent reason which warrants us extending sitting hours tonight to continue a second reading debate on legislation we do not properly have in front of us. We will not be supporting that extension.

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I indicate that the opposition will also not be supporting the motion by the Manager of Government Business in the Senate. All year we have been reiterating and echoing the sentiments of Senator Brown that there have not been enough sitting weeks allocated for this year, and we flagged that early enough for the government to have changed it. We invited the government to increase the number of sitting weeks this year at an early stage when we could have planned. We cannot now plan additional weeks for the final throes of this year because of commitments that we build around the parliamentary sitting calendar from a very early time. Incidentally, I flagged with the chamber when the calendar for 2010 was introduced into this chamber that, again, not enough sitting weeks were included on that schedule. The government needs to consider increasing the number of sitting weeks at an early enough stage so senators can plan, as Senator Brown rightly says, their electoral activities around the parliamentary sitting schedule. We cannot do ad hoc arrangements on a constant basis.

The other thing that I have mentioned during various debates on extensions of hours throughout the year has been that we are going to stop cooperating with the government on extending on an ad hoc basis when the sitting schedule is so low. I give to the chamber an indication of how generous the opposition has been in relation to sitting hours this entire year—and also last year. I give some statistics about how this has happened. In 2008 we gave up 83 hours and 54 minutes for the consideration of government business in addition to the scheduled time that the government had arranged. That was 83 hours of time that the opposition could have used fairly constructively in prosecuting the case that the opposition has against the government. So far in 2009, without the year even having been completed, we have given up 68 hours and 12 minutes for additional government business because of one simple fact: the government has failed to allocate enough sitting weeks for the Senate to properly consider its business.

Here we are again at the very end of the sitting year. If we roll over again and say, ‘Yes, you can have additional time,’ what is gong to happen next year? Next year there will be no additional weeks. The government will come and say, ‘Okay, let’s crib the opposition’s time and use that for government business because the opposition have been so generous in helping to facilitate the legislative program through this chamber’—which is not our responsibility. Our responsibility is to fit in with the sitting schedule as it is and debate within the full parameters of the sitting schedule, not to increase the sitting schedule on an ad hoc basis or give up valuable opposition time. In 2008 we gave up the equivalent of 4½ weeks of government business time to the government, and in 2009 we have currently given up about 3¾ weeks for the government. The opposition has played ball a long time with this, and this is not the first warning; I have fired shots across the manager’s bow on several occasions starting from May or June this year. In coming now, at the last minute, to ask for additional hours the opposition will not support you.

Steve Fielding (Victoria, Family First Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Quite clearly, the government in this chamber cannot manage itself out of a wet paper bag. Seriously—it is an absolute joke. You have yourselves in a heck of a mess and should be making sure that we continue the debates that we have in front of us. You are trying to rearrange hours to fit in the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme legislation. I will make it clear: I do not think we should be doing any agreement before Copenhagen and I will not be supporting any move to facilitate that legislation this side of Christmas.

Secondly, how dare you come in and ask for extra hours when in just the last sitting period you approved 50 sitting days for next year—nearly 40 per cent down on what it was a decade ago? It is a disgrace. You know it avoids scrutiny. You know that having shorter sitting weeks means you can come in here in the last two weeks to try to ram things through. You sit there blank faced. You cannot be serious. In the last sitting period you said 50 days would be enough. It is not right and it is not on. I will not be supporting these extra hours. We will have to start to manage the business of this chamber for you if you cannot. If you cannot organise yourselves well enough, then we will have to step in and do it. It is a disgrace. I will not be supporting it. It looks like we are going to have to order the business before this chamber to make sure we do get through the program in the time that we have. And we can do it. It needs a bit of common sense.

Question put:

That the motion (Senator Ludwig’s) be agreed to.