Mr BURKE (Watson—Manager of Opposition Business) (16:43): The opposition will not be supporting this motion. The reasons that the Leader of the House gave for wanting the member for Kennedy to be able to speak go to the fact that every member of the parliament should be allowed to speak on the bill if they want to. The interesting thing is: the Leader of the House has been here so long he has gradually been absorbed by the green leather and cannot understand that there is such a thing as new members of parliament. It is one thing for him to say, 'All of this has happened'— Honourable members interjecting— Mr BURKE: I am not allowed to call them by name; it would be unparliamentary. He reflects on the parliament of the Abbott government when he talks about what happened in 2013. He is right to point that out, because we are dealing with Abbott government legislation, as we tend to all the time in the years of the Turnbull government. What the Leader of the House is doing here is saying to everybody who came in for the first time at the last election, and there are some on each side of the chamber and quite a few on this side of the chamber— Mr Pyne: Where are they? Where are all your mates? Mr BURKE: If you want me to rev it up into a bigger speech I am happy to, but I think we can just get through the issues on this one. We should have a situation where people have the opportunity to put their view. It is as simple as that. The rush that the government is going through at the moment in wanting to make sure that this bill can go through, is so it can get to the Senate. If the Leader of the House were to walk 100 metres to the Senate, he would see that it is not sitting today. It is not sitting tomorrow. It will be three weeks until it comes back. There is no problem at all in allowing members of parliament to have their say. But I must say that the thing I find interesting—I may even say amusing—about the motion that the Leader of the House has brought forward is that he has insisted that the only person to give the summing-up will be the Prime Minister. He is actually moving that the person who represents the minister for workplace relations in this House will not be allowed to do the summing-up on the bill. Given that that is himself, I find that a moment of honesty that really explains what sort of term, what sort of kick-off, the Leader of the House has had. He has gone from the point of day after day burying his head in his hands and saying, 'It's not me; it's the people around me,' to now saying that maybe it is him and then putting in writing on the Notice Paper and now moving in the parliament that under no circumstances is the minister representing the minister for workplace relations going to be allowed to deliver the summing-up. I can only suggest the determination that the only person who would be allowed to talk would be the Prime Minister is probably an idea that came from the Prime Minister. For the Leader of the House, who has been humiliated week after week in this place, to now decide, 'May as well do the humiliation myself,' is a step I did not see coming, but that is what is contained within the motion before the House. This is another attempt for the government to stifle the parliament from doing its job. There cannot be a rush in getting legislation to the Senate at a time when the Senate is not on. The argument that everybody has had the opportunity to speak on this debate is a direct affront to every member of parliament who was elected for the first time at the last election. Extraordinarily, it was a double-dissolution election on this bill—and, very specifically, they will claim there is a mandate for the government for this bill to go ahead—and members of parliament who have come into this place for the first time, campaigning either for or against this very issue, and are not going to be allowed to say a word. I have to say that, if the government thought that this debate was going well for them, they would not be moving this motion. If they thought it suited them to be talking about this issue—to have their backbenchers up making speeches and sending them out to the electorates and getting the story up in the media—they would not be moving this motion. There is no procedural reason to do it. There is no legal reason to do it in terms of getting a bill through the other place. The only reason to do this is that an item that they thought was going to win them a thumping majority at the election turned out pretty badly for them and they lost a series of seats in it. If they thought this was a winning argument, the motion before us would never have been moved. What we have is a Leader of the House who has decided that best he carries by resolution that under no circumstances is he allowed to talk, that under no circumstances are any of the new members allowed to talk and that only the Prime Minister will be allowed to, so that we can get this bill out of the way so that it can go nowhere for three weeks. That is what the Leader of the House has done. The bit about him not being allowed to talk, I sort of have some sympathy with—he sort of nearly gets me there. But I have to say on this bill: don't put something forward as a double-dissolution trigger if you don't want it to be debated in the parliament. If you were going to put something forward as a double-dissolution trigger you would think the government would be willing to have a debate on it. Mr Pyne: We have debated it twice. This is the third time. Mr BURKE: This parliament has never debated this bill. Mr Pyne: It is exactly the same bill. Mr BURKE: This parliament has never debated this bill. This parliament was elected in a double dissolution where this bill was one of the triggers. As to the whole concept of what issues members of parliament should be allowed to talk on, there are in fact no pieces of legislation where members of parliament should have a stronger argument that they are allowed to make their case and should not be inhibited by a gag motion or a debate management motion than the triggers for a double-D. That is exactly what is happening here. Sometimes when we get these debate management motions, you get the government saying that they will cut off debate at a certain time of day. When they do that, at least parties on each side can organise that, if they want people to go for briefer times, they can share speaking times and try to make sure that people get as much of a chance as possible. What the Leader of the House is doing instead is saying, 'No; not one new member elected in the double dissolution will be allowed to speak in this debate—not one.' The word 'atrocity' gets thrown back and forth pretty often in this place. This one qualifies. Mr Pyne: So did the last 20. Mr BURKE: No; in the last 20 you said it about me, and they were untrue. This one qualifies, and it qualifies for a very simple reason. If the reason for the election was a double dissolution on this bill, then members of parliament who were elected in that double-dissolution election should have a right to make speeches on it. Even though there should not be one at all, if there is to be a debate management motion, it should be one with a time limit that at least allows members of parliament on either side of the place who want to speak on this bill to be able to do so and to be able to make sure that something that we thought that the election was going to be about—even though it disappeared once we got to the campaign—can in fact be something that is opened up for debate. But, beyond all of this, if the government thought this debate was going well, the motion before the House right now would never have been moved. The opposition will oppose it. The SPEAKER: The question is that the motion moved by the Leader of the House be agreed to.