MEDIA RELEASE: Leader of the house misleads public in desperate search for double dissolution trigger

Joint Media Release with the Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and the Shadow Special Minister of State, Brendan O'Connor.

The Government’s quest for a double dissolution election reached high farce today, when the Leader of the House Christopher Pyne had no idea about the status of one of the Government’s so-called priority Bills.  

Christopher Pyne on RN Breakfast this morning claimed the Abbott Government's Registered Organisations Bill was already in the Senate. 

"We’ve passed in the House of Representatives the Australian Building and Construction Commission bills and the Registered Organisations Commission bills, so the action on those two bills is in the Senate."

PYNE - ABC RADIO NATIONAL BREAKFAST - 6 APRIL 2016

Christopher Pyne made perfectly clear he has no idea about the current standing of the Registered Organisations Bill.

"Yes, but the Parliament is being brought back because the Senate will not pass the Australian Building and Construction bill and the Registered Organisations Commissions bills to clean up the building and construction industry. The House of Representatives has done that job. We’ve passed it. So it’s the Senate that are failing to see the need to build up, to reform building and construction in Australia, not the House of Representatives."

PYNE - ABC RADIO NATIONAL BREAKFAST - 6 APRIL 2016

The Registered Organisations Bill was defeated on 17 August 2015 and is no longer in the Parliament.

Neither House of Parliament could vote for the Bill without it being reintroduced.  

Malcolm Turnbull has been pretending that the only reason to go to a double dissolution election is because the Senate won’t pass the Registered Organisations Bill and the ABCC Bill: 

"If the Senate passes this important legislation – the ABCC Bills and the Registered Organisation Bill – there will be no double dissolution."
 

TURNBULL - PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT - 21 MARCH 2016  

If the Government genuinely wants to pass the Registered Organisations Bill, it needs to reintroduce it into the Parliament first. But Christopher Pyne – the person responsible for managing the House of Representatives for the Turnbull Government – seems to be unaware of this.

The Liberals claim a double dissolution is not a political tactic but their continued comments about their industrial relations bills prove that it is.

This is a Government desperately searching for a reason to exist. It is riddled with daily chaos and policy drift.

APRIL 06, 2016