Coalition caught on the hop by surprise vote

The absence of two Coalition MPs on the floor of parliament triggered an embarrassing loss for Malcolm Turnbull.

Steve Ciobo apologises after being absent from the vote as the government’s Leader in the House Christopher Pyne looks on. Picture: Kym Smith

Cabinet minister Steve Ciobo and LNP backbencher Warren Entsch were forced to apologise yesterday after their absence on the floor of parliament triggered an embarrassing loss for Malcolm Turnbull.

Labor and crossbench MPs supported a Greens’ motion calling on the Prime Minister to accept New Zealand’s offer to resettle 150 refugees now in offshore detention after the two MPs failed to make it to the chamber.

While the government’s Leader in the House Christopher Pyne was able to use a technicality to have the motion overturned, the vote was an embarrassing fifth lost vote for the government in the 45th parliament.

Until September last year — when senior ministers including Peter Dutton, Christian Porter and Michael Keenan attempted to leave early on a Thursday afternoon and the Coalition lost three divisions in the House of Representatives — no majority government had lost a vote in the lower house since 1962. The government also lost a vote on a Labor amendment to a bill on the Great Barrier Reef in August.

The Greens’ motion, which passed the Senate with the support of Labor and crossbench senators, called on the government to ­accept the New Zealand offer and negotiate conditions similar to the US resettlement agreement.

The government lost the division 72 votes to 73 because of the absence of Mr Ciobo, who said he had been “detained”, and Mr Entsch, who had been giving a Sky News TV interview.

Mr Pyne moved to have the vote taken again under Standing Order 132, “Mistakes corrected in Minutes of Proceedings”.

Speaker Tony Smith defended his decision to accept Mr Pyne’s motion, saying: “The standing order provides for missing a vote through misadventure, which I think is pretty much everything other than deliberately not voting, that’s why that word is there.”

Opposition Leader in the House Tony Burke protested.

“The government already has lost the numbers on the floor of the house. That’s exactly what’s just happened,” he said.

“And now they want to run off on some sort of excuse with the chaos that’s here in this building, the chaos in this room, all brought on because they can’t turn up to work.

“That’s why this has happened. It’s not like it’s a surprise that divisions were going to be important this week. It’s not like this has crept up on them without them knowing, and yet two members of parliament couldn’t be bothered coming here for work.’’

Mr Ciobo and Mr Entsch returned to the chamber in time for the government to win the repeat vote 74 to 72.