Labor has urged the presiding officers of the federal parliament to establish a bipartisan working group to ensure the chambers can continue to sit amid a second wave of Covid-19 infections, arguing “the parliament can’t get cancelled every time there’s an outbreak”.
The opposition has responded to the decision on Saturday to cancel the upcoming federal parliamentary sitting fortnight by pressing for better protocols to ensure the legislative program continues with as little interruption as possible.
Tony Burke and Katy Gallagher, the manager of opposition business in the House of Representatives and the Senate, have written to Tony Smith and Scott Ryan, the House speaker and the Senate president, urging them to appoint a group comprised of themselves, the chief medical officer and the chief health adviser in the Australian Capital Territory, plus the leader of the House, the manager of government business in the Senate, and their opposite numbers. The purpose of the group would be to “develop the protocols that would enable parliament to sit in a safe manner, as scheduled”.
“With five weeks between now and the next scheduled sittings of 24 August, we have the time and the opportunity to determine the arrangements and health protocols that would allow parliament to sit, should the health challenges be ongoing,” Labor’s letter to the presiding officers says.
“It is important that such a project be approached in a cooperative and bipartisan manner, informed by the best health advice.”
“Parliament has already achieved the very difficult task of holding in-person sittings during the pandemic, and has done so without jeopardising the health of those inside Parliament House or residents of the ACT. No doubt, the current situation presents new and complex challenges, but these challenges should not be viewed as insurmountable.”
With Victoria now battling a substantial outbreak, Scott Morrison on Saturday said he had received medical advice from the acting chief medical officer, Paul Kelly, that there was “significant risk associated with a meeting of parliament in the context of the increased community transmission of Covid-19 in Victoria and the trends in New South Wales”.
Morrison also suspended sittings in Canberra during the opening phase of the pandemic. But the chambers later resumed in scaled back form to conform with social distancing guidelines.
The government is due this week to present updated economic forecasts and provide advice about the future of the income support rolled out during the opening phase of the pandemic. Parliament was due to sit again from 4 August.
But Morrison issued a statement on Saturday saying he had written to the Speaker requesting that the fortnight-long session be cancelled, putting back the resumption of parliament until 24 August, which would be a month after the economic statement.
On Saturday, the Labor leader Anthony Albanese said he accepted the medical advice, but “when it comes to this sitting though, it is problematic”. He said there was a pressing need to hold the government to account, “particularly because of the uncertainty that remains with jobkeeper and jobseeker”.
On Sunday, Gallagher told reporters there needed to be a better system than ad-hoc cancellations. “At the end of the day, we need to put in place things that are going to make the parliament safe so that the parliament can sit, because the parliament can’t get cancelled every time there’s an outbreak, if what we’re being told by the medical experts is that outbreaks are going to continue to occur.”
She said there were limits on what the parliament could do virtually, but she noted governments liked “less transparency, less accountability”. She said having parliament sit in a Covid-safe way was “an important part of our democracy”.
