Topics: senate legislative agenda, senate voting reform, election timing.

E&OE…

JON FAINE

I’ll get to texts and calls in a moment, but standing by in our Canberra studio is Senator Scott Ryan. He’s a key Minister in Malcolm Turnbull’s frontbench, Minister Vocational Education and Skills, but he’s also Deputy Manager of Government Business in what yesterday turned out to be an utterly chaotic Senate. Senator Ryan, good morning to you.

MINISTER RYAN

Good morning, Jon.

FAINE

Has the Government lost control of the debate in the Senate?

RYAN

Well the Government doesn’t have a majority in the Senate, Jon.

FAINE

No, but you can control the order of things and looked like yesterday you lost control.

RYAN

Well no we can’t actually, and the Senate has on a number of occasions taken Government legislation off the agenda like it did a few weeks ago with the Building and Construction Commission Bill. Yesterday we put in place a motion that ensures that the legislation on Senate voting will be debated on this week, and the Senate will sit until that motion, until that legislation is dealt with. And for the first two hours the Labor party and some of the crossbenchers decided to kick up a stink and tried every delaying tactic they knew, just as they did last week when we spent nearly two days on a motion to actually allow us to start to debate the legislation. This is just filibustering from the Labor Party who have changed their position.

FAINE

So you have lost control of the agenda.

RYAN

No, not at all. I mean, the motion was passed yesterday that will see the Senate sit until these pieces of legislation including Senate voting reform are dealt with, and that will likely be sometime, I would imagine, Friday. And we will sit back and let everyone have their say and then there will be a vote.

FAINE

At one point you were voting against bringing on a vote – a debate – on a Bill that you said was urgent and essential for a double dissolution. When you’re arguing against something that you in fact were until recently arguing for, it just doesn’t make sense to the public and you can’t argue against your own proposition on the Building and Construction Commission, can you?

RYAN

Well we tried to do that three weeks ago. The Senate, including the Labor Party, the crossbench and the Greens deferred it. Yesterday the Labor Party and the crossbench tried to bring that Bill back on for a debate to stop us debating Senate voting reform. Now, the people trying to bring on the Building and Construction Commission had made it clear they were going to vote against it. They didn’t have open minds.

FAINE

But you want them both through, don’t you?

RYAN

Yeah, we do. And this week we’ve said that our priority is changes to the Senate voting system to ensure that it’s like the House of Representatives – your vote goes where you put the pencil on the paper. No more secret backroom deals.

FAINE

No, but this is a tactical struggle going on behind the scenes and it looks as if Senator Xenaphon is the engineer of the downfall of the early election, to an outsider.

RYAN

Well, look, whether or not – the timing of the election is a matter for the PM, and there are multiple double dissolution triggers in place. The Senate, only three weeks ago, voted to refuse to let itself consider the Building and Construction Commission Bill- that was the Greens, the Labor Party and the crossbench. So we’ve got an arrangement in place this week to say people can talk for as long as they want to, to have a full and frank debate on Senate voting reform, and then there will be a vote. There’s no stopping that, it’s going to go for as long as the Senate takes, and there was an attempt to stop that by putting up a piece of legislation by the Labor Party, who then said they were going to vote against it. So it was just another attempt at filibustering.

FAINE

And a successful one it seems. It’s going to run its course unless you’ve got some rabbits to pull out of who knows which hat.

RYAN

Well, sometime later this week there will be a vote on Senate voting reform. That was our priority this week and that’s what we’re going to get to and that was put in place yesterday despite all the noise created by the Labor Party.

FAINE

Senator Ryan as always I’m indebted to you for your time this morning. It’s been a fascinating bit of parliamentary tactic this week. We’ll see where it gets to in the course of the next 48 hours or so. Senator Scott Ryan, one of the architects of Malcolm Turnbull’s rise to power, Deputy Manager of Government Business in the Senate. Your calls and your texts and plenty more coming up after the nine ‘o’clock ABC news.

(ENDS)