Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That intervening business be postponed till after consideration of government business order of the day no. 6 (Biosecurity Bill 2014 and related bills—second reading speeches only).

Mr Deputy President, I will speak briefly to the motion before it is put just to indicate, as colleagues are probably aware, that this additional sitting day today—the day before the budget—was occasioned through the goodwill of crossbench senators, who thought this would be an opportunity to transact business. I would like to thank them for putting the proposition forward and facilitating today.

In the spirit of that, there were three bills that those colleagues agreed would be the business transacted. Given the chamber has made such    good and quick work of the three pieces of legislation before us—if only it were ever thus, and it is good to see more goodwill more often—we thought that there could be the opportunity to use this time. Indeed, the opposition also put forward that we should explore what it may be possible to do. Given the government's undertaking during discussions with the crossbench senators was that we would not seek to do anything other than those three bills unless there were complete consent and unanimity in this place, it does appear, following consultations with colleagues, parties and crossbenchers, that that is indeed the case. I just want to make clear that we are putting forward this motion because it represents the will of colleagues. We would not have sought for a moment to seek to do anything contrary to the agreement that we had reached earlier in relation to today. I will leave my remarks there and thank colleagues for their goodwill and cooperation.

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would not wish to spoil the goodwill that has burst out around the Senate chamber, but I want to put on record that, as the chamber knows, the Labor Party had sought to have a full day of sitting today. The will of the chamber at the time was not to support that. As we put forward at the time, we felt there was sufficient business for us to use the whole day if we were going to take the expense and time to have this sitting today. That was voted down by the chamber, and of course we support that result. In view of that, when the government came to us about what was going to happen because of the speed with which we were dealing with the three bills that were before us, we supported the will of the chamber again to say that we make as much use of today as we can and move forward on the biosecurity bills. But I just wanted to remind the chamber that it was the view of the Labor Party that this should have been a full day.

Question agreed to.