Motion: Debate Be Adjourned: Government Sledge Motion

MOTION:

‘DEBATE BE ADJOURNED: GOVERNMENT SLEDGE MOTION’.

Tuesday, 17 March 2026.

Mr NEWBURY (Brighton) (17:28):

That was the shortest contribution – less than a minute of the 5-minute time. What a false start. What a short contribution on what could have been an opportunity for the Member for Frankston to set out his concerns and reasoning to adjourn debate.

What we talked about this morning on the Government Business Program debate was the fact that for four weeks in a row the Government has misused this Parliament’s time. It has misused this Parliament’s time by moving to sledge motions instead of debating matters of legislation. For example, I suspect that the Council tomorrow will be considering a Private Members Bill to strengthen IBAC laws, and I would hope that when that Bill comes back to this Chamber the Government will afford it a significant amount of time to talk about that legislation. I will be surprised if it does, but let us live in hope. That is the type of thing this Parliament should be doing. Now, I am in no way saying that at no time should the Parliament be dealing with a motion. There are meritorious motions that the Parliament considers often: condolence motions, for example, or moments of national or state importance where the Parliament comes together and speaks on those motions.

But what the Government is doing week after week now, because they have run out of a legislative program, is simply trying to deflect from their own problems by moving to political motions. That is why I phrased and coined these motions ‘sledge’ motions, because that is what they are – they are sledge motions. The Government hop up one by one and attack the Opposition and then feel very, very clever about it. Well, they are not clever. They are not clever, and I think –

Mary-Anne Thomas interjected.

James NEWBURY: Victorians say so, Leader of the House. So, you can see, because they are on a 25 primary, that is how you know what Victorians think. Victorians do not think this stuff is clever. Victorians know that the Parliament’s time should not be used for simple, outrageous sledging.

Members interjecting.

James NEWBURY: You can hear the sledges coming across the Chamber now. Do not worry; you are trying to move the motion to waste the Parliament’s time, Government, to move to a sledge motion. If their motion is successful, that is what they will be able to do. But when they try and do it, what they have not thought through, because this is now the third week where this has happened – the Government has not realised that you have to go through procedural motions to get to your sledge motion. You do not just simply get to debate your sledge motion. You do not simply get to move a motion in the House and move to that sledge motion immediately and allow the Parliament to use its time in that way. No, you have to move through procedural steps.

What we are doing now is the first of those procedural steps, where the Government says ‘That’s the end of this Bill.’ Now, the next thing the Government is going to do is try and move the Bill that they were considering until ‘later this day’. That is another procedural step, which, as the Acting Speaker will know, allows another 30-minute opportunity. In both instances, there will be a vote, and the Coalition is going to take every opportunity to call out what this Government is doing and require all the Members of the Government to come in here and hopefully listen to me on a procedural debate – because I know how much the Government loves coming in here to hear me on a procedural debate. And every time they do that, we are going to call it out, because the Parliament should be doing better and this Government should be doing better.

The Government should be using time better. What we know is that in a few weeks’ time this Government is going to publicly say, ‘We can’t do everything we promised this term, Victorians, because we have run out of time to do it.’ So, I am putting a bookmark in that, and we are going to come back to this, I can assure you. When the Government say they cannot do everything they promised to do because they have run out of time, I am going to remind the Government of all this wasted time, when they simply came in here to sledge. That is what the Government is going to be doing in a few weeks’ time, saying time has run out and they cannot do everything they promised. This is just raw, outrageous politics. It is a waste of the Parliament’s time. They need to be called out for it. And we certainly will not be helping them, so we will oppose it.