Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I commend the Leader of the House on one of his better speeches! I do not wish to delay the House at great length on the matter of the sitting schedule for 2013, particularly since most members of the House realise they will not be coming back to this place at all next year. So, rather than giving a very long speech on a schedule that is unlikely to ever sit or meet, I will simply note again that there are 17 sitting weeks. When I came into the parliament two decades ago there were more like 20 sitting weeks a year. Unfortunately, the government does not want the parliament to sit. When the parliament sits it is held to account, particularly in question time, and the government does not like being held to account in question time.

I note that the Senate will sit for seven weeks in the first half of the year. While the Leader of the House has said that we have added one sitting week for the Senate, which we know they will use very wisely, I still feel that seven sitting weeks in the first half of the year is not exactly knocking themselves out. I would have thought the government would have the Senate sit a great deal more so that we can get through the business of the government.

I would also make the point that it has become very commonplace for the Leader of the House to require that legislation be introduced into the parliament and then debated and passed the next day. In the last few weeks this has been very common, with things like the implementation of the report of the expert panel on asylum seekers; the unclaimed money and other measures bill, which is being debated today, the fair work amendment; the social community services pay equity special account bill, which was about pay increases for community sector workers; and of course the revoking of the supertrawler licences. Some of these bills we have supported and some of them we have opposed, but the point is that we have not had the correct treatment that an opposition should. The convention has always been that the bill should be introduced and then debated the following sitting week, not the next day. Only in the rarest circumstances is the parliament required to have a bill introduced and then debated the next day.

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