Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, indeed; you are right, Senator Birmingham. Having given his spray, he now has left the chamber and that is what we have come to expect from him. He has made some quite bizarre commentaries in relation to this about the ‘rude’ and ‘non-communicative’ nature of the government on these measures. He knows as well as anybody in this chamber that the unsuspecting public listening in would not be aware that we have a very regular meeting of leaders and whips that includes the Greens, the Democrats, Family First, Labor and the coalition, and we seek to go through the measures and the management of the Senate. We had such a meeting, and the Greens were represented. They were given a list of the bills, and we discussed why the government wanted these measures put through. So to mischievously suggest to the Australian people that we have just dumped this motion in without explanation is, unfortunately, misleading. I am not allowed to say ‘deliberately misleading’, but I know that Senator Bob Brown knows the procedures and that he hopes the Australian people listening in do not.

The bills, which we gave notice of some days ago now, that are referred to in the motion contain a lot of budget measures, and most senators from both sides would agree that it is important to get budget measures through. There is a substantial amount of non-controversial legislation as well. It was instructive—and Senator Bartlett did aver this fact; it was a weakly made point, but I accept that he at least had the integrity to mention this—that nobody in the debate averred to a single piece of legislation, in the list that we provided, that required urgent or detailed consideration, or provided objection to the legislation.

We as a government are not treating the Senate as a rubber stamp; we are, in fact, proactively moving to give the Senate more time to consider the legislation. On the one hand, the Labor Party say we are a government that has run out of puff; on the other hand, they say we are putting too much legislation forward. Make up your mind: which is it? We are still legislating for the benefit of the Australian people. All the arguments we heard this afternoon were exactly the same arguments we heard about a fortnight ago, when exactly the same considerations were being put forward. I encourage all senators to vote for this motion, which will give the Senate more time—I stress ‘more time’—to consider the legislation that is before us.

Question put:

That the motion (Senator Abetz’s) be agreed to.