Mr HATTON (5:09 PM) —I stand here today to speak in the grievance debate in relation to stolen speeches. Forty minutes of my time as the member for Blaxland are to be stolen from me in this House by the Leader of the House due to the impending guillotining of the debate on the tax bills and the impending guillotining of the address-in-reply. As I understand it, the 72.6 per cent of electors in Blaxland who, on a two-party preferred basis, brought me back to the House after the election on 3 October could have expected that, in a parliamentary democracy in Australia, the person they elected to represent them in this House would have an opportunity to address this House on the government's plans as outlined by the Governor-General at the beginning of this parliament. We understand that, for the first time in the history of the parliament, the address-in-reply is to be effectively guillotined in the next few days. I will not get a chance to speak on the address-in-reply.

Every speaker from the opposition and every member from the government who will have no chance to speak on the address-in-reply will be, for the first time, in a situation where the government, having outlined its plan after winning the election, will guillotine the address-in-reply. In all the previous terms of parliaments of this Commonwealth since 1901, members have been able to give their response—either positive or negative, whether from the government or the opposition. But here I understand that, for no good reason, it is the intention of the Leader of the House to forestall that; not merely to move it to the Main Committee, but to forestall debate on that completely.

Once in the life of a parliament—therefore, once in the life of this 39th Parliament—individual members of parliament should be able to address an answer to the government's program. It is not enough to be told that there will be appropriation bills to be dealt with next year and that that is therefore an opportunity to speak broadly about the government's budget bills. Debate on the appropriations may be broad, but it is also specific. It deals directly with the appropriation bills which are part of the budget. Only once can an individual member of this House elected to represent their constituency absolutely and broadly deal with the whole of the government's program. So instead of 20 minutes of this parliament's time, whether here or in the Main Committee, to address that broad program I have to deal with this matter as briefly as possible in 10 minutes in the grievance debate that should be given to other matters.

Guillotining of bills is not new to any parliament in the Commonwealth. We have seen it before; we will see it again. But to bring in 20 bills dealing with the goods and services tax for debate within a period of about 20 hours—and, taking out all of the excess, it falls much below that—and to then say that, on this most crucial set of bills being debated cognately, the chance of individual members of parliament who were elected in part either for or against that government program of so-called tax reform should be denied the opportunity to speak on this GST bill is a devastation to the people that they represent.

In the electorate of Blaxland I can quite readily say that the result was resoundingly against a goods and services tax. I campaigned very strongly against that tax, as did my Labor colleagues. In Blaxland I achieved a 10.01 per cent swing to Labor, the third highest in Australia. In Villawood, my primary vote was 86 per cent. Running through a series of others, it was in the high 70s, down through the 70s, down to the 60s and then lower. The answer from most of the electorate was that they were resoundingly against a GST. Every individual constituent in Blaxland who voted for me on that basis or on the other program I put forward should rightly expect that I, as their representative, should be allowed to speak on these bills in depth. Every member of the government should be in that position as well. This should not be taken away from them.

This is an indication of the entrenchment of prime ministerial and executive government. At the whim of this executive, which the member for North Sydney is now a part of, the right to speak in this parliament on behalf of our electors has been swept away, and will be swept away in the next few days by the guillotine being applied on these major bills. We can understand that happening at the end of a session. When the government has a pile-up of material and they want to get that material through, and quickly, they might stop and they might have to ram that through. In every parliament of the Commonwealth that has happened. But we are at the start of this 39th Parliament.

In relation to the GST bills, the government has finally been dragged kicking and screaming to a review in the Senate. That set of Senate committees has to report by 19 April 1999. It is 1998. We have—or should have—until 19 April 1999 the capacity to deal with those bills and debate them in the House of Representatives, the people's house. By the end of this week that will disappear. It will disappear because of the attitude taken by the Leader of the House, the attitude taken by this Prime Minister and the attitude taken by this executive. There is not one single cogent reason for the members of the House of Representatives to have their ability to speak on these bills taken away, given that they are so central and so important.

Similarly, the address-in-reply could run for the length of the parliament. Why do they wish to scuttle to Government House by the end of the week with an address-in-reply which is not complete? It will not have the response of the member for Blaxland, it will not have the response of all of those other people on the opposition side who do not have a chance to speak and it will not have the response of all of the members of the government who will be denied their chance to comment on the government's program for this 39th Parliament. I think this is an utter outrage. It is a very stupid approach for this government to take. And it is at the start of this parliament, not at the end.

I was elected, in the first instance, on 15 June 1996 at a by-election in Blaxland. The 3 October election was my first full election competing with all the other members of the House of Representatives at once. As I indicated before, the result was an extremely substantial win. I want to thank my wife, Shirley Hatton, for her great forbearance and courage during that whole period of time.

Mr Neville —She is a great lady.

Mr HATTON —As Paul Neville indicates, she is. I thank her for her forbearance and courage and for putting up with me during that period of the election, which was so difficult. I have had other difficult periods of time that she has had to put up with, and so I want to personally thank her for going through the hardest time we have had, because this campaign was so hard.

I would also like to thank my electorate officer, Veronica Webb, for all of the outstanding work that she has done for me since I was elected and during the campaign period. I thank my campaign team at large and all of the branch members in Blaxland who worked so hard to achieve the magnificent result in Blaxland. I also thank every one of those individual electors who cast a primary vote for the Labor Party in Blaxland or who cast a preferred vote to give us the third highest swing to Labor in Australia.

I want to dedicate this win to the memory of my grandmother, Mrs Edith Dooner, who died a few months short of that election. She came to Bankstown in 1924 from the country, from West Wyalong. She came to a Bankstown that was effectively still rural. With her husband, Tom Dooner, she raised nine children during the harshness of the Depression and the second world war. After my grandfather's death in 1952 at an early age, she raised the family on her own. She had great skill, great courage, enormous tenacity and enormous faith in me. So I dedicate this win, which was so good, to my grandmother, and I pledge this, as I pledged to the electors in Blaxland: given the opportunity by this government, I will speak on their behalf in the House of Representatives and outside and put their concerns, their troubles and their difficulties, and take to task the savaging of them by this government in this House. (Time expired)