Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Hansard source

Frankly, I find this quite extraordinary. The minister is here. He could have sent a parliamentary secretary or a junior minister if he so desired. If he wants to waste the time of Commonwealth taxpayers by sitting here, refusing to respond in any reasonable way to reasonable questions, he might just as well go back to his office and send a representative. This is the one occasion in the course of the year when members of this place get a chance to ask ministers of the Crown detailed questions in respect of their portfolio responsibilities.

These are detailed questions which go to appropriations of taxpayers’ money. After three or four quite gentle questions, the minister spits his dummy and now sits rooted to his chair—through fear or arrogance or both—doing nothing other than desperately watching the clock tick down. What sort of farce have we got here? Mr Deputy Speaker, are you going to use your good offices to see whether the minister is actually seriously interested in the workings of this chamber and this House or whether he is proposing to sit there, after 10 long years, an arrogant representative of an arrogant government, refusing to be held accountable in any reasonable way, either through this House or through the parliament?

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