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

What we see in here day after day is motions for suspension of standing orders based on spurious reasons. Today we have it yet again. House of Representatives Practice makes it very clear that suspensions of standing orders happen when there is an urgent item before the parliament, when there is some momentum—not worked out at eight o'clock in the morning, typed out, presigned and brought in here day after day. In the past fortnight we have had this motion for suspension, motions for suspensions demanding a royal commission and motions for suspensions over police investigations and over issues of guns on the streets of New South Wales. We have had all sorts of bizarre attempts at suspension. I am only surprised that we did not get a motion for suspension blaming the government for Ian Thorpe's failure to make the London Olympics! We have had everything else because everything is the responsibility of the government and the responsibility of the carbon price—or perhaps the CIA and the connection between the two.

In these motions to suspend standing orders we have an attempt to distract from their failure to engage in the real debates, their failure to engage in debates on the economy, their failure to debate issues of climate change and its substance. We saw today the Leader of the Opposition trying to distance himself from some of the rhetoric of those who were demonstrating outside—not a demonstration against the carbon price but a demonstration called the 'global warming hoax rally'. They were the same people who demonstrated outside my electorate office.

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