Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Cormann, on a number of occasions you have taken points of order and stood up and argued that you have been seriously verballed, and you have taken umbrage about it. So I do find it a little difficult to take you seriously when you try to fundamentally misrepresent what the minister said. If I could also defend Ms Roxon, she is getting married later this year but I do not think she will be adopting the ‘Mrs’ title. Seriously, that is a serious verballing of what she has said and a serious verballing of evidence from officials. The point is: there is always money in the contingency reserve for premium increases—not premium increases caused by this. Let me be clear. You are trying to deliberately bring together two pieces of information and mislead this chamber. You should stop misrepresenting both the minister and officials, because it does not do you well to have got yourself into a situation where you want to claim you have been misrepresented and then you start doing what you claim has been done to you.