Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Faulkner, if you want to live in that belief, we will let you run with that. Over this week and again today we have seen that the government has serially failed to address a question and particularly to answer a question. That is effectively what question time is about—answering questions without notice to the government. It is not a good look, I have to say. When I got home last night I sat up and watched question time, which shows how sad my life is! But I would suggest that some of the government senators might like to do that themselves, because it can be quite instructive. It might encourage them to have a chat to some of their ministers and suggest that they might like to actually have a crack at answering a question, because it shows a very poor front for the government when their ministers cannot, will not—or, in Senator Carr’s case, refuse to—answer a question. I thought that was quite exceptional yesterday.

In respect of my question today to Senator Ludwig about the 30 per cent Medicare rebate, the question really brings to light an underlying belief within members of the government that they do not support the 30 per cent Medicare rebate.