Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Can I just remind the minister that my terminology of ‘this late stage’ is based, of course, on the fact that your leader in this place said to the Australian people and the Senate that this package had to be passed by last Friday and every single day’s delay would be of great consequence. Here we were yesterday saying, ‘Let’s put it to the vote,’ and the Labor Party itself voted against putting it to a vote. Now, having been clothed with this legislation and all the information around it for some time, the government itself—and this is the important thing—does not even know whether it needs or wants to move amendments to its own legislation. Whether the Greens, Senator Xenophon and Senator Fielding might want to move amendments I can understand might be out of the control of the government, but whether the government itself wants to move amendments must surely be within the mind of the government at this late stage of the proceedings, this legislation having been before this chamber now for a good week.