Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I do not wish to turn this into a slanging match between both sides. I begin by thanking the government for recognising the convention that has applied in this place and without which this place would be dysfunctional—that is, when a senator, for whatever reason, is inadvertently detained and fails to make a vote that would have made the difference to an outcome, that is recognised and the vote is recommitted. So we thank you for recognising that. But we are not prepared to put up with the insulting, gratuitous and idiotic remarks about the opposition.

We have a situation where Senator Scullion has explained why he missed this vote. He explained that he should have had his beeper with him—and no doubt it is embarrassing to Senator Scullion that he did not have it—and he did not hear the bells. That is the reason why he was not here. It has happened before on our side, it has happened on the Labor side and it will happen again; Senator Brown himself said that he has also missed a vote. It is a regrettable fact of life that there will always be senators who will occasionally miss a vote. This exaggerated and idiotic language from other senators, about the opposition being in disarray and all of that, is completely rejected by us. For Senator Ludwig then to try to play partisan politics with this inadvertent mistake by Senator Scullion is ridiculous.

The opposition has been cooperating to the full extent with the government to help them manage their program, which, frankly, has been chaotic for the last two weeks. In the last week we had an occasion when the government had no legislation to give us; we had nothing to do. Now this week they have rammed everything through in a rush. So do not give us lectures about cooperation or management of programs! We will work with the government to make sure their program is dealt with this week—but do not give us these gratuitous lectures.