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

Senator Conroy made one correct statement: the government does organise the business. And it did. It organised the red, and this bill appears well down that list. Senator Conroy, for whatever purpose, wants to bring this bill up, and yet in November last year Senator Conroy spent a week-long trip in Egypt instead of being here to debate the bill when it could have been brought on. There was a time and opportunity then. It was not brought on then. Now, all of a sudden, on the last day of the sitting week, he wants to bring it on for—what?—the period of about 15 minutes because he knows that we then go into question time at 2 o’clock and from question time we go into general business and other matters and the legislation will not continue until the next sitting fortnight.

Why do you want to debate it for 10 or 11 minutes? It just does not make sense. Senator Conroy must have some reason—whether he is embarrassed because he did not get it up last year, I do not know. Senator Conroy, the opposition will not be supporting you moving to change the order around for the sake of 11 minutes. What is the big issue of bringing it on for 11 minutes? It does not make sense. If it was that important your government should have put it on the red in the order it should have been. We are all prepared to move into the order. The next bill to be considered is the fairer private health insurance bill. We have Senator Cormann sitting here ready to go.

The allegation is filibustering. If that is true we could have very easily gone to 2 o’clock in non-controversial legislation. We did not. We facilitated the entire stream of legislation in a normal and orderly manner. Every speaker, I think—bar possibly one—spoke well below their allocated time so there was certainly no filibustering. In fact, quite often in this chamber I would love to go back to the Hansard and find the records. In fact, I might just do this, Senator Conroy. I would love to go back and find out how many ministers have spoken in non-controversial legislation longer than the shadow ministers. It is a complaint I have lodged with your manager on several occasions. We are expected to be brief and your ministers quite often go for the full 20 minutes—one of them is sitting in this room now. I think you need to check some of your facts about filibustering because we seem to be the more efficient party in this chamber.

We seem to be the party that actually gets work done. You come in here and constantly try to rearrange it. You cannot even allocate enough sitting weeks in a year when we give you thousands and thousands of opportunities to do so, and we end up with a bit of a mess. You try to fit legislation in where you cannot fit it in. You want to bring on a bill for 11 or 12 minutes. I cannot fathom the workings of the government, and I am sure the public cannot. I think the public will see this as we move towards the next election. You cannot organise your program properly. You also have to be cognisant of the fact that the government—whilst it is the government—does not have the numbers in this place. The opposition parties completely have the numbers in this place. We often give you warnings. I do not know how many times I have got up and warned the government of mismanagement of this place. On many occasions to assist the government we have had to help rearrange business. The government cannot run this chamber properly. We have to intervene constantly to do this.

The mess is clearly because the government does not listen to the Greens, the two Independents or the two minor party senators and the opposition when it comes to sitting weeks. We have flagged this—and Hansard will reflect—in July, August, October and November last year. We said, ‘Make sure you have enough sitting weeks in the program for 2010.’ When the calendar comes out, what does it have? Another extraordinarily low sitting year with huge gaps. That is mainly to facilitate not the business of this chamber, not the business of the parliament, but to fit in with the Prime Minister’s overseas travel itinerary. That is what the whole sitting schedule is designed around. It is nothing to do with the fair work of this place. You would get a lot more out of this chamber if we had a lot more sitting weeks. So you try to come in here and waste 11 minutes by rearranging the business. Senator Cormann is sitting here ready to go. We are not ready for the legislation further down the list and we will be opposing this rearrangement of business.