Mr BUTLER (Hindmarsh—Minister for Health and Aged Care and Deputy Leader of the House) (15:33): As the Deputy Leader of the Opposition points out, there is plenty of opportunity for this airline to increase their flights into Adelaide, if they chose to. There are plenty of rights to expand a range of other markets. But I just want to explain to some of the members who have only been here less than a decade what is actually happening here. What is happening is a government is permitting a debate on a suspension motion. For those who experienced life under the last several years of the former government, particularly under the prime ministership of the member for Cook, this will be an utter novelty to them. Time and time and time again, every time the former opposition, now the government, sought to suspend standing orders to have a debate, we know what happened. Every single time, there was a gag. There were a record number of gags preventing the opposition from having any opportunity to raise a suspension of standing orders. For those who haven't been here for more than 10 years, this is what is happening. It is called an actual debate over a suspension of standing orders moved by the Leader of the Opposition. It used to happen very regularly when we were last in government. The then Leader of the Opposition, the then member for Warringah, would raise one of these things every 24 hours or so, and every time the debate was allowed to flow. So this is a novelty. I am sure we are all enjoying it. I am certainly enjoying it. It's much better than just having chamber duty and going through my correspondence. At least the Manager of Opposition Business dipped his cap to some degree to the idea of a suspension, which is to argue in this chamber why standing orders and the usual business of the chamber should be suspended to deal with the subject matter of the motion that has been moved by the Leader of the Opposition. For those who, again, maybe haven't been here a very long time, this is quite an extraordinary circumstance. The Leader of the Opposition effectively marched the shadow Treasurer out of the chamber so that he was not able to deal with the matter of public importance that presumably he felt sincerely was a matter of public importance and had argued the case for in the opposition's tactics room. He decided not to seek the call to ask the Treasurer a question about GDP figures in spite of the fact that GDP figures were released this week. The Leader of the Opposition marched the shadow Treasurer out of the room. He wasn't quite a gazelle, like we all remember the former member for Sturt sprinting up the stairs one time, but it was a pretty extraordinary sight to see. It reminded us again of yesterday, when the Leader of the Opposition forced the member for Canning, who clearly wasn't prepared, to second the dissent motion in the chair and went from being the next leader to the former next leader. It just shows the level of ruthlessness of this Leader of the Opposition. Not only does he play politics with the government, not only does he play politics with the Australian people; he plays politics with his own frontbench colleagues. We were ready to have the matter of public importance debate. We all stood supporting the member for Hume, as we often do, and his intention to have a full-throated debate with the Treasurer of the country about the state of the economy. I have read the matter of public importance that the shadow Treasurer put before the parliament, and genuinely it is important. We on this side of the House understand, and I think some genuinely do on the other side as well, the pressures our economy is under and the degree to which those pressures are flowing right through Australian households and Australian businesses with the global inflation shock that swept through the world economy as we moved out of the emergency phase of the pandemic. It's an inflation shock that economies right around the world, including ours, are still coming to grips with. The degree of work we as the government have had to do on this side of the parliament, that the Reserve Bank has had to do and that businesses and households have had to do to deal with— The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Claydon ): Member for Farrer, are you seeking the call for a point of order? Ms Ley: It's a point of order on relevance. The minister at the dispatch box has not mentioned the suspension order once. I ask that he come back to the substance of the debate. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is untrue. Sit down. It is entirely relevant. If you want to start raising relevance in this debate, you could have been silent for the last two speakers. I am giving the call to the minister. Mr BUTLER: The Deputy Leader of the Opposition hasn't been here long, but this is a suspension debate, not a debate over the airline. If you win the suspension debate, you then get to debate the question of Qatar. This is a suspension debate. The point I am making is that what you are seeking to suspend is a debate about the state of our economy, a debate that the shadow Treasurer, to his credit, wanted to initiate about the state of the economy. The Leader of the Opposition's priority is not to talk about the economy, not to talk about cost of living, not to talk about the price of medicines and not to talk about the loopholes legislation. If this suspension motion wasn't being proceeded with and if the MPI had been canned by the Leader of the Opposition when the shadow Treasurer had been marched by him out of the chamber, we would be moving to the loopholes legislation, but apparently that is not of any particular importance. There has been no question of the minister on that legislation—lots of interjections but no questions of the minister on that legislation. It just goes to show the priorities of this Leader of the Opposition. His priority is not about having a discussion about the state of the economy, in a week where our GDP figures were released. No question from the shadow Treasurer to the Treasurer about GDP figures, seeking to press and probe what is good about the state of our economy right now and what the real pressures are—absolutely nothing. Finally, on Thursday afternoon, we thought we might have a debate about it—but, no, the Leader of the Opposition thinks it's more important to have a debate about the landing rights of a Middle Eastern airline located on the other side of the world. The only cost of living he is willing to talk about right now is international airfares. No debate about the price of medicines—a bit of cat-calling and yelling out, and encouragement of people up in the gallery, but no real debate about the price of medicines and what that means for households. No debate about the impact on energy prices of the legislation they opposed in December—the substantial relief against all the upward pressure caused by the global gas market on energy prices for households. Instead, it is this obsession by the other side with the landing rights of one Middle Eastern airline located on the other side of the world. Frankly, I think all of us and those who journey into question time have learned more than we ever thought we'd have to know about the arcane area of landing rights and the negotiations between different aviation authorities about that. As we have learned, this is not something particularly new to this minister or this government; this is something the former minister, the member for Riverina, had to traverse as well. He is a great bloke, much loved across the chamber, but it is an area that he's had to traverse just as much as anyone else. We are not going to support this suspension. We wanted a debate about the state of the economy. We wanted the shadow Treasurer to finally, this week, have his moment in the sun. Instead he was marched out of the chamber by the Leader of the Opposition, forced out with his tail between his legs, to have to humiliatingly fail to turn up to his own party. He sent the invitations out, ordered the booze and canapes, but failed to turn up to his own party where we could have a full-throated debate about the state of the economy. Okay, if they don't want to do that, let's get on with the debate about closing loopholes, about wage theft, about the impact of the gig economy on all those workers who have to undertake all those hours of work without basic protections just to make ends meet. But no—instead, this Leader of the Opposition wants to play politics with the landing rights of one Middle Eastern airline on the other side of the world. This is just an extraordinary display of this Leader of the Opposition's priorities. Nothing to say about cost of living, nothing to say about health policy—which is probably no surprise, given he was voted by doctors as the worst health minister in the 40-year history of Medicare. Instead, he just wants to go in to bat for the landing rights of one airline based on the other side of the planet. We will not be supporting this motion. If you're not willing to have a debate about the global economy, we'll deal with this suspension, we'll oppose it and, if the will of the parliament is not to accept it, we'll get on with debating the Fair Work legislation and closing loopholes. The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Claydon ): The time for this debate has expired. The SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.