Business of the House: 10 June
Mr HIBBINS — I rise to speak on the government business program. The Greens will not be opposing the program in this instance.
Yesterday it was entirely appropriate that we had a day to offer our condolences on the passing of former Premier Joan Kirner and again this morning for a former member for Niddrie. The Greens do not have any amendments to the bills on the program, but some of the bills would have been worthy of going into the consideration-in-detail stage, particularly the Planning and Environment Amendment (Recognising Objectors) Bill 2015 and the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Restrictions on the Making of Protection Orders) Bill 2015. I remind members that it was a government commitment to make the consideration-in-detail stage a standard feature of bills and it is unfortunate that the government is not fulfilling that commitment. With the limited time frame for us to go through the bills, when are we ever going to get to general business? The poor member for Burwood has 100 notices sitting on the notice paper. When are we going to get to them?
We have an unusual practice in this house of not having time dedicated to general business, which is unfortunate. The other day I wrote to the Premier, saying that it would be timely for us to pass a motion in support of marriage equality, a notice for which is standing in my name on the notice paper. Unfortunately we do not have time dedicated to general business in this house and I do not think we will ever get to it. I encourage the government to provide more time for its bills so that we can go into the consideration-in-detail stage to meet its election commitment, and to seriously consider having time allocated for general business to allow members to put forward private members bills and to debate motions. With that, we will not be opposing the government business program, but we do have concerns about it.
Motion agreed to.