Page 3330 - Week 11 - Thursday, 11 November 2021
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to do that. The reason seems to be they want to get away on holiday. It seems to be the only plausible answer that we have been given. They refused it this year. This is an odd year, I grant you, because of COVID.
I do not see the rationale for next year. “We want to knock off and go on holiday” is the reason for this year, because it has been such a busy year, such an odd year. I do not see that that flies for next year, 2022, when we are—hopefully and all expectations—back to normal.
I am trying to establish whether this is just a deliberate attempt by the Labor Party and the Greens to reduce scrutiny on government. Certainly, that seems to be the case. We have seen that with the whole committee fiasco with the estimates process this year. Is it simply laziness? What we have here is a bit of lazy leftie government that does not want to sit. They want to knock off on 1 December next year so that they can get away on holiday.
Unless there is a rational explanation for why not, what is the reason for this historically low number of sitting days? We know that they do not want to do things like select committees because that would mean they have got to do more committee work. That has really affected estimates and a whole bunch of other processes we have got here. They do not want to do sitting days because that would stop them taking their two-month break that they are looking forward to next year.
Mrs Jones: Down at the coast house.
MR HANSON: Indeed, Mrs Jones might be right. It might be a matter of people popping down to their coast houses. Maybe Mr Rattenbury and Mr Davis have got some maintenance to do on their rental properties. Who knows? We can speculate about why they need so much time off, why the government need so much time off to take a break.
My amendment is a simple one. Let us just have an additional sitting week. It is important. It is very important to the opposition. It is very important to the opposition because we do have business, we do want to come in here, and we have questions to ask of this government. We want to make sure that we allow time in this place for debate on a whole range of issues that we put forward.
Let me tell you, Mr Assistant Speaker, that every sitting week the opposition sits downs and considers what it is going to be discussing in its private members’ business, and there are always way more issues that we want to come in here to discuss than we are allowed time to do.
Members interjecting—
MR HANSON: Those opposite are interjecting. They are going to fight for their holidays. They are fighting for their extended holidays, two months Christmas break. They want that. The lazy lefties; that is what they are. What we have here is the lazy leftie ACT government who are going to be arguing and fighting.
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