Conference with the Senate

The majority voted against a motion:

That the message from the Senate be considered immediately.

What does this bill mean?

This motion was introduced by Bradfield MP Paul Fletcher (Liberal), who explained that:

Members of the House might recollect that approximately two weeks ago four bills were passed by the Senate. Those bills were the subject of a message which came to this House requesting that the House then deal with those bills. Indeed, on the document circulated by the Leader of the House—the blue—it was set out that the government intended to move that all of them be made an order of the day for the next sitting, with the result that they would have ended up on the Notice Paper.

That would have been the ordinary process. That would have been the ordinary thing that would have happened, consistent with the appropriate sharing of responsibilities between the two houses of the Australian parliament.

But that did not happen, because we saw from the Leader of the House a concerted attempt to drive those four bills into limbo so that they'd never be considered again. We saw the ludicrous spectacle, in respect of at least a couple of those bills, of the Leader of the House engaging in a go-slow. He sat on his hands and refused to stand and move that the message be dealt with or that the bills be made an order of the day. This of course is a very serious matter, because it means that in effect the House, under this government, is essentially thumbing its nose at the Senate. It's effectively saying to the Senate, 'Well, you may have passed four bills, but we're going to do nothing about it.'

What was the Senate message?

The Senate requests a conference with the House of Representatives on the following bills transmitted to the House of Representatives for concurrence:

• Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Small Business Redundancy Exemption) Bill 2023;

• Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Strengthening Protections Against Discrimination) Bill 2023;

• Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency) Bill 2023; and

• Fair Work Legislation Amendment (First Responders) Bill 2023.