Mr MELHAM (3:48 PM) —I rise to support the matter of public importance lodged by the Leader of the Opposition, which is in the following terms:

At the outset, I will deal with some of the matters raised by the Leader of the House. I have known the Leader of the House for some time—not just the time I have been in this parliament; we went to university together. He has not grown one bit. He might be the favoured son of the Prime Minister, but that his contribution just before mine was a complete diatribe against the Leader of the Opposition and did not go to the matter of public importance shows that he still has the same debating style he had at university. He was never any good at university and he is not much better as a minister of the Crown. The arrogance he showed is what this MPI is all about.

I have been in this place for 15½ years and I know what a proper debate is and how it takes place. We have not had that sort of debate on the Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Bill 2005. Instead, we have had a bill of 687 pages and an explanatory memorandum of 565 pages that was lodged in the parliament on 2 November 2005—only eight days ago. Before that, we were debating a press release, as no-one had seen the bill. This is not the first time the government has done this.

A government with a majority in both houses should be benevolent. It should allow for proper process in the parliament. Indeed, we were told by this Prime Minister how, when he was elected, he would improve the standards in this House; they are worse than they have ever been. Former Prime Minister Keating had much more to say in two days of question time a week than this Prime Minister and his ministers have to say over the whole of the week. We get no information; we get nothing.

But, with this bill that was tabled, we have a situation where 20 members on this side of the House have been denied their right to speak. The member for Lingiari puts his hand up; he is one of them. What does that mean? Those 20 members represent two million constituents. The representatives of two million people have been denied the right to speak in this House in relation to this bill—a bill introduced only eight days ago. What was given to us? One hour of consideration in detail. I remember reading the Hansard in 1975, when the Prime Minister engaged in detailed consideration of the then Racial Discrimination Act and put his views against penal sanctions for racial hatred provisions. He has held those views for a long time. The Whitlam government knew how to have consideration in detail debate. That is where you get to challenge the minister. You can ask the minister to clarify. You can go into forensic debate on a bill. There has been none of that, only one hour—a contemptible process.

We also have the situation where a Senate committee that has been set up to start on 2 November—in effect, the day the bill was tabled in the House—has a closing date of 9 November and a reporting date of 22 November. As of today, the committee’s web site indicates that it has received 4,500 submissions and 1,000 emails. This is what has come from a government with a majority in both houses. The Prime Minister seems to be acting with indecent haste, salivating to get this legislation on the statute books. We saw him today seeking out members of the government to shake their hands. He is like a little boy in the lolly shop; all his Christmases have come at once.

The tragedy is that the Prime Minister did not go to the electorate and seek a mandate on these changes. The electorate had no inkling of this. That is why the $55 million government advertising campaign, which happened before the legislation was introduced into the parliament, has had no effect on the community. The penny has dropped that he is out of his box. The community know that this is not going to be any good for them. The government are doing business with a $55 million advertising campaign, not a proper debate. We have had public broadcasts in relation to other matters, with the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition given equal time on the ABC—but this time there is none of that. This Prime Minister and his government are now all about political opportunism. They try to, in effect, marginalise the opposition and milk the issue for all it is worth.

This will come home to roost. I have a different analogy from my leader’s on this legislation. I think this legislation is a cancer. It is a cancer that will grow and grow and come to eat at the heart of this government over time, with the electorate saying, ‘This is unfair; this is un-Australian; this is not what we voted for.’ There are many people out there who voted for this government and are now going to get their comeuppance through this legislation.

The member for Hotham correctly pointed out that collective bargaining is essential to protect people’s living standards, because, simply put, an individual up against the boss is not a fair match. That is why unions were formed: there had to be a representative body in order to rebalance the workplace in a sensible way. The member for Batman, also a former president of the ACTU, had this to say:

Why should the government do this at a time when there is good employment? Why do they hate workers so much? Because they are an ideologically driven government; they cannot help themselves. With the majority that they now enjoy in the Senate, which was unexpected, they are bringing everything out from the bottom shelf and into legislation. You reap what you sow in this game.

The Prime Minister was elected in 1996 on a fraud—he said he was going to govern for all of us. The basis of his election campaign was that he was not going to upset the apple cart, he was going to govern for all of us and his would not be a radical government. This is very far-reaching and radical legislation. The sad part is that the parliamentary process is being usurped. The Leader of the House was comparing apples with oranges. Go and have a look at the earlier substantive debates that took place. There were not another 20 speakers left to speak; there was agreement on both sides, because they were regarded as important debates. I negotiated set periods of time on the native title legislation. It was done by agreement, and there were consideration in detail stage debates. We are elected into this place as parliamentarians. Why isn’t there a House of Representatives committee or a joint committee looking at this legislation? Why do we have to sit back and see the Senate conduct legislation review, while in this chamber we get neutered by the government?

I have served on a number of committees in the 15½ years I have been in this place. Our committees are just as capable of looking at this legislation, but for some reason the government just want to bounce it through the House. Why? Because it is all an inconvenience to them. It is all too much. Well, get out of the parliament, I say. I believe in the committee process and that the executive should pay respect to the parliament. Our committees should be functioning properly, and question time should be a time for information. Question time is a disgrace. It is 10 times worse than anything that occurred under the Keating government. You can tell by the state of the gallery; there is hardly anyone in the gallery during question time. During the Keating years, the galleries were full. You got entertainment, but you also got a bit of information. Yes, the government went a little too far. At the time, I did not believe the Prime Minister should only come into the House twice a week. I made the analogy of Bradman: you would not put Bradman on the fence; you would have him in there batting for as long as you could.

What happened with this legislation is a disgrace. This parliament has been treated with contempt. Twenty members of this House, representing two million Australians, have been denied an opportunity to speak in this House. The consideration in detail stage was a farce—one hour only. (Time expired)