Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the Chief Government Whip for that very good question. Indeed, he would be aware that this government has had some 195 pieces of legislation passed—195 passed, none defeated. The government is able to function effectively in a parliament that is functioning effectively in spite of some of the bizarre strategies we have seen to circumvent the parliament being able to determine the direction of legislation. This week alone we saw, firstly, more than 12 hours of debate on the Parliamentary Service Amendment (Parliamentary Budget Officer) Bill. It went until after midnight. It took until 10:30 for the opposition to realise that the filibustering was not going to get them anywhere because the legislation, based upon the unanimous agreement of the Joint Select Committee on the Parliamentary Budget Office, was going to be passed by this House. We know that they had 70 billion reasons why they wanted to oppose that legislation but their filibustering did not work.

Last night there was a procedural debate to facilitate five extra sitting hours on the clean energy bills—something that the opposition said they wanted. What was their response? Not to support it but to talk it out for 90 minutes.

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