Business of the house
Adjournment
Ms ALLAN (Bendigo East—Leader of the House, Minister for Transport Infrastructure, Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop) (15:18): I move:
That:
(1) the house, at its rising, adjourns until Tuesday, 5 October 2021, at 2.30 pm, or an earlier day and hour to be fixed by the Speaker;
(2) if, in the opinion of the Speaker, the date of the next scheduled sitting or a rescheduled sitting should be changed on the basis of health advice, the Speaker will consult with the Leader of the House and the Manager of Opposition Business to set a new day and hour to meet;
(3) the Speaker will notify members of any changes to the next sitting date.
Ms STALEY (Ripon) (15:18): I rise to speak on this procedural motion on the sitting of the house, and I do so largely because of what happened in late August in relation to the sitting of the house. The then Manager of Opposition Business wrote to you and asked, firstly, that the advice be provided by the chief health officer rather than any other person and also that we always have the approach of how we can sit rather than whether we should not sit. In your response to him at the time you noted that this motion had been passed without debate and that was one of the reasons you gave. I was therefore keen to put on the record the opposition’s view that, while we understand this is the procedure that has been followed and it is the way to deal with a pandemic and we do not oppose that aspect of it, it is still the case that we believe that, firstly, any health advice as to the sitting of the house should come from the CHO, or at worst the acting CHO, not some lower level bureaucrat, and also that it should always be in light of how the chamber, how the Parliament, can safely sit, particularly when there are other industries such as construction continuing in various ways. And so therefore we would request that that be taken into consideration. As a result, we will be opposing this motion but we will not be dividing on it. We want to put it on the record that we believe we are at the point where we now need to look at different ways to ensure that the house always sits.
Ms SANDELL (Melbourne) (15:20): Just on this matter, I note that the motion says that the Speaker will consult with the Leader of the House and the Manager of Opposition Business and that crossbenchers, Independents and the Greens, are not included in that. However, we would appreciate a heads up. In the last iteration of this we were given no notice, and we heard about the sitting from the media. So any notice that the Independents and the Greens can be provided and any consultation with us would be much appreciated as well.
Motion agreed to.