MPs and senators were recalled to Canberra on Monday by Governor-General Peter Cosgrove at Mr Turnbull’s request, in a constitutional move not used for 40 years, to consider the industrial reform bills.
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Turnbull said in late March that voting to elect lawmakers in Australia would be held on July 2 if the current parliament failed to pass two union bills.
The Coalition and Labor traded blows in question time on Monday about their competing promises to tackle unions’ bad behaviour on construction sites and to hold a royal commission into the banks.
Before Australia’s last general election in 2013, another former prime minister, Julia Gillard, announced a September poll date in January of that year, more than 200 days in advance. Senator Glenn Lazarus has also indicated he does not support the restoration of the ABCC.
Instead, Turnbull will, probably today, offer a hastily assembled package designed to create the illusion of greater oversight of banks – more funding for ASIC, which the government had stripped of over $100 million in funding and hundreds of jobs, and perhaps some more powers.
Mr Turnbull emphasised the government was not yet in caretaker mode and would continue to make decisions until the election was called.
The government lost the vote on the motion to reinstate the Australian Building and Construction Commission by 36-34.
“We have until the 10th or 11th of May to decide to have a double dissolution election”, Bishop said on The Project.
As a result, Australia is facing the first double dissolution election in three decades, and only the seventh since the country was established as federation in 1901.
Malcolm Turnbull says he will call a double dissolution once the federal budget is handed down.
With Labor and the Greens opposed, the legislation needs the support of six of the eight crossbenchers to pass. Not only is the government facing demands from big business for tough austerity measures, but it is under pressure from Washington to play a more aggressive role in the USA “pivot to Asia” against China.
The bills robbed construction workers of basic human rights and put their lives in danger, he said, with evidence showing a rise in workplace deaths when the commission was established by the Howard government.
Conroy said a strong governor-general “would never have agreed to this …”
“We will follow the caretaker convention to the letter, unlike the previous Labor government”, he said.
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Mr Entsch said he was “pleased” with the hearing he had from the Prime Minister and Treasurer, while Mr Christensen said he had argued that “if Labor give them [the banks] a black eye, we have got to give them two”.
