Mr BURKE (Watson—Manager of Opposition Business) (09:30): Can I open by making it clear that I will be moving an amendment at the end of this speech. I say that now because it is to be seconded by the member for Chifley and I thought if I flagged it early he might still be in the chamber. If he is not, I have the member for Wakefield, but those odds usually are not good either. Madam Speaker, if you listen to the arguments that were just offered by the member for Kooyong, effectively he has provided all the arguments as to why this gag motion should not be agreed to. In the first instance, he has said that dozens of his colleagues will be supporting him in arguments today. With 15-minute speeches, if he had only two dozen of his colleagues make speeches we would have six hours of debate, which he is about to say cannot happen—and that would presume there were no speeches at all from the other side. To claim that dozens of his colleagues are going to want to speak in support of this at the exact same moment he is moving a motion to deny them the opportunity of that shows the lack of judgement that is being applied in the motion. It is not often you get a gag motion that even the Leader of the House is too ashamed to come in and move. That does not happen very often. But on this one the member for Kooyong has managed to find shame even within the parliamentary principles that are put forward by the Leader of the House. The member for Kooyong made another thing clear during his speech. He went through all the examples of deregulation that he thought were noteworthy. The problem was that they were not the ones that are before us today. They were not the issues before us today. Mr Frydenberg: That's not true! We've got a thousand pieces— Mr BURKE: Now he is interjecting and wanting to claim, 'Oh no; we've got all these pieces of legislation in front of us.' They are all redundant pieces of legislation. To be cleaning them out, to be getting rid of redundant legislation, is neither here nor there but it is certainly not a reason for wanting to gag debate. If you look at the grand figures for what the government is claiming they are wanting to achieve on deregulation, the Prime Minister's figure is $2.33 billion. That is what he is intending to achieve on deregulation, removal of red tape. Today we have $1.8 million in front of us—and this is meant to be a carnival, a festival, a big bonfire of red tape. If today is an indication of the pace at which the government is pursuing deregulation, there will be 1,000 such days before the Prime Minister can reach his target. It will take 1,000 days like today before the Prime Minister can reach his target. And what have they attached those savings to? They have attached them to issues like the removal of hyphens, the removal of commas. It is going to be, from this government a punctuation-led recovery. What we have from the government here is nothing more than the ultimate example of spin and style over the top of substance. I believe that we should handle this bill in the way we handle any non-controversial and non-urgent legislation, and that is that we refer it to the Federation Chamber. That is what we do when something is neither here nor there. That is what we do when we are dealing with something controversial. To think that we are going to have fanfare and the dedication of an entire day in parliament to changes in punctuation, to abolishing redundant legislation! That that is worthy of people coming from around the nation, in the spotlight of the media, and saying, 'This is what the parliament's all about,' shows how little the government has to offer. With that in mind, to the motion that has been moved I move: That all words after "occurring" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: "the bills being referred to the Federation Chamber for further consideration, then being returned to the House no sooner than 24 November 2014." The reason for that amendment is to keep it within the framework of a debate management motion, to keep it within the framework that the government does not want this to be able to drag on forever—but also to provide the opportunity to test whether or not there are in fact dozens of members on the other side willing to support the member for Kooyong, because I reckon there probably are not. I reckon if anyone is wanting to cut this debate short— Mr Husic: Put your money where your hyphen is! Mr BURKE: We just had from the member for Chifley: 'Put your money where your hyphen is'! The attempts here from the member for Kooyong are flawed by his own arguments. If he wants to talk about any of the issues that are substantial and decent debates to have, that involve significant savings to business, then by all means have that debate, but that is not what is in front of us. If he believes there are dozens of members from his own side who want to rush to support him, well, let them speak. We would love to hear their passion on punctuation! We would love to hear how hard they want to argue that what is happening today matters. We would love to also hear the debate management motion that says there are going to be 1,000 sitting days scheduled for the rest of the term—given there are not 1,000 days left in the rest of term—for the Prime Minister to be able to meet the target. What we have before us today is the ordinary business of getting rid of redundant legislation and bringing some other issues up to date. I have moved the amendment that I handed to the clerks. The debate should be allowed to run in the ordinary course that we give to non-controversial legislation. The SPEAKER: Is the amendment seconded?