Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

I think we have just seen during the honourable member’s contribution the contempt that the government holds for this parliament—a government that could not provide a quorum when it was called, a government that will not provide speakers in key debates in this place. You would not have thought there was a more important issue out there in the Australian public than petrol prices, yet the government could manage only three speakers on that bill—three government speakers to 23 speakers on this side. You would have thought the increased deployment of troops to Afghanistan was an important, serious national issue. The government was able to scrape only one speaker—

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