Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The safety of our parliamentary workplace was rightly in the spotlight last week. The Senate heard much about the need to make this place safer, with parliamentarians on both sides getting on their high horse about improving the culture and safety of this workplace. But after all this preaching we topped the week off with a marathon Friday night sitting which only wrapped up at 4.16 am on Saturday. That's a sitting day of almost 19 hours. This followed two late-night sittings. Much of the last few hours was a complete spectacle, I might say, with the coalition torturing Minister Watt—and all of us, quite frankly—with their bad-faith, repetitive questions.

The Set the standard review found that long and irregular hours of work were a factor that exacerbates aggressiveness in parliamentary workplaces. Parliament's 'work hard, play hard' culture, involving long hours, particularly during sitting weeks, was found to contribute directly to bullying, sexual harassment and sexual assault. Importantly, the review heard that long hours were often unproductive and inefficient, particularly in the Senate, and were having a detrimental effect on staff safety and wellbeing. As a response, the government reduced the length of sitting days, but they've made a complete mockery of their own reforms in the last few sittings, with hours motions to extend sitting times until late-night rushed through. These were common last year too, at the cost of people's wellbeing. This is unacceptable. Staff inside this chamber and in the rest of this building should not be forced to put up with this. Our parliament should lead the way in creating a decent workplace, one where everyone feels safe, respected and valued and where people from all walks of life and backgrounds want to come to work and can leave work at a respectable time. This is not it.