Polls "work part time" next year

There was a lot of empty space inside. And many of the scheduled weeks of meetings will not take place because we will be immersed in an election campaign immediately after the early April budget.

Opposition Affairs Officer Tony Burke shared his sentiment on Twitter.

Pyne fought back.

Even if you accept Pyne's version, nine weeks out of 26, that's not a lot.

Here is the breakdown: there is only one week left in 2018 in Parliament after this week.

Normally, Parliament would meet again at the beginning of the year following Australia Day. But Scott Morrison's government waited until mid-February to recall Parliament. Following this, our politicians have almost everything February and all of March.

They will meet again a few days in the first week of April for the first budget, after which Morrison announced that he would announce the elections. Then it's another week off.

Their planned return is April 15, but as the Labor Party pointed out on Wednesday, the sitting week will probably not take place because the nation will be plunged into an election campaign just in time for Easter.

Once you have taken into account the return of the writs after the elections and the time required to establish a new government, it is likely that Parliament will not sit until next August.

Pyne said the current calendar issue was a "storm in a cup of tea" and an example of "bubble problems".

"The public is not at all interested in the number of parliamentary sitting weeks before the budget," he told ABC on Wednesday.

The Labor Party thinks differently and will remind the public of its views as often as possible before the May election.

"People care if their MPs work only part-time," Burke told Fairfax Media on Wednesday.

"The truth is that they want to spend as much time as possible campaigning and as little time as possible to govern."

Following the defection of star rookie star Julia Banks, every day the government sits in the House of Representatives is a day when it is vulnerable.

Most worrisome for the government is the possibility that the Labor Party and the parliamentary group will meet to fire Peter Dutton, Minister of the Interior, in the High Court because of his pecuniary interest in two daycares.

In his Wednesday interview, Pyne was already trying to downplay the importance of the government's loss of voice on the floor of the house.

Take this as a sure sign that he expects that to happen and is worried about the seriousness of his situation. Pyne, along with his then President, Tony Abbott, was given a mission to create a perception of chaos in the lower house while Julia Gillard ruled in the minority.

Now that things are going well, the government wants to limit its exposure to the same tactics. It also takes as much time as possible to campaign, especially in marginalized electorates.

Add it to the list of unintended consequences of Malcolm Turnbull's move to Morrison – lighter traffic and shorter wait times for coffee in Canberra next year.

Twitter: @JacquelineMaley

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