Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

Standing orders should not be suspended and the government's agenda and program for the day should be allowed to continue as was planned, for a number of very important reasons. Firstly, this motion moved by the Leader of the Opposition and seconded by the Manager of Opposition Business is a sheer stunt. Secondly, there was absolutely no preparation for this motion whatsoever in question time. Labor spent the entire question time talking about every other subject until the final question. You would have thought if it was so important that standing orders be suspended that this was a subject that would have taken up the entirety of question time from the Labor Party. You would have thought that if they were so outraged and so offended and regarded this as the No. 1 issue that requires the government's agenda to be put on hold for the rest of the afternoon, they would spend all of question time building for the suspension motion, as we used to in opposition when we thought something was that important. Instead, Labor waited until about 3.04 pm to ask their first question about this subject and then, trying to gather the necessary outrage within a matter of about a minute and a half, the Leader of the Opposition launched this extraordinary suspension motion. It is not my responsibility to give the opposition advice on how to run tactics from opposition, but I would give them some advice. I think the Manager of Opposition Business is not serving them very well—

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