Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

As the shadow Treasurer says, arrogance and incompetence. Lots of people on that side have one or the other, but the Treasurer lands both.

With that letter that the shadow Treasurer had, you could see the Treasurer, when he said, 'Oh, I'll table it'—and then looked at it and sort of did and sort of didn't. Maybe he just did not realise that, when you table a document, you are meant to hand it over. Maybe that had not occurred to him. But I will tell you what should have occurred to him. The Labor Party is not going to have a situation where this mob think they can bring in legislation without anyone having a chance to look at it, without anyone being able to read it, and think somehow that will be a rubber stamp. They might have managed to get the Green political party to be a rubber stamp for them. They may well have some of their own backbench who are willing to be a rubber stamp for them. But you will not find the Labor Party being a rubber stamp in this place. You will not find a situation where the Labor Party is willing to throw out the standing orders of this place because the Treasurer wants to. The Treasurer put the Speaker of the House in an absurd situation today, an impossible situation. We had the parliament sitting in session, in the middle of the debate, in complete silence. No-one said a word.

See this speech in context