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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 09 Hansard (Wednesday, 18 August 2004) . . Page.. 3835 ..

is always to say, “I do not know what I will do at that point.” I do not know whether members of parliament get maternity leave. I commend my motion to the Assembly.

MRS DUNNE (11.49): I commend Ms MacDonald for her concern for the family. I will not say that it is belated concern and I will not be churlish and draw attention to the voting record of the member on issues affecting families in the ACT. However, I will chide Ms MacDonald for not taking this opportunity to make a submission to the Standing Committee on Administration and Procedure, which has had available for some time its review of standing orders. As a result of that the Liberal opposition will not be supporting this motion.

Such a mechanism is already before us. The Standing Committee on Administration and Procedure conducts an ongoing review into standing orders. It is incumbent on all members who have views about changing the standing orders to make a submission to that committee. I racked my brain wondering whether I had seen a submission from Ms MacDonald. On checking I realised that Ms MacDonald had not made a submission to the Standing Committee on Administration and Procedure relating to its review of standing orders.

That is a typical Labor response to this issue. It takes Labor members three years to discover that there is a problem and then they institute another review, regardless of the fact that there is a current review into standing orders. The standing orders are there to set the times that we sit. There could be some discussion about the fact that we should sit a little earlier than 10.30 am each day, but Ms MacDonald has not said a word about that to the Standing Committee on Administration and Procedure. With six sitting days still remaining and two private members’ days before the end of this Assembly, is this the most pressing matter that Labor backbenchers can bring before the Assembly?

Surely there is something more pressing than this—for example, the environment, fire prevention, water supply, child abuse, school funding, sexual slavery, police on the beat or the state of our hospitals? The answer to that question is that none of those things is more pressing than making life a little more comfortable for members in this place. If we are talking about making this place more family friendly I suppose that, as a mother of five, I am probably the person who would benefit the most. I do not know whether any member or staff members have as many children at home as I do. However, there is more to it than that. I would stand to benefit quite nicely if we limited our sitting hours.

When we sign up for the job and we sign our nomination form for the Liberal Party or the Labor Party and pay $250 to the Electoral Commissioner to be allowed to run for election in this place, we know that it is not a nine-to-five job. This motion is just confirmation of the fact that this government is a nine-to-five government. Ms MacDonald said, “We all start work at 9 o’clock.” Let me just run through what I did this morning. I started at 6 o’clock, did my first media interview at 6.45 am, was at the baker by 7.10 am, had the school lunches ready by 7.30 am, and was in my office at 8 am having got breakfast for my children. This morning I did not have very much time to talk to my children. However, I did last night. We work around these issues because we sign up to serve the community, not to look after ourselves. When we sign up we do so with the agreement of our families.

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