Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I again place on record that this is not a political stunt, as Senator Ludwig has outlined in his contributions. How can it be such when you have the Liberal Party, the National Party, the Greens, Senator Fielding and Senator Xenophon all disagreeing with the government? Senator Ludwig is starting to sound like a spoilt child who is not getting his own way.

The only reason that the coalition have acted in this way, with the support of the crossbench, is simply that this has become an urgent situation. The implementation of this measure was going to occur this weekend. The government had ample opportunity on Monday or Tuesday to bring their bill forward so that we could amend it. They were scared. They knew that we would amend the bill and that it would have passed this chamber, so they deliberately withheld the bill, forcing our hand to create an emergency situation which other senators from the crossbench and my colleague Senator Cormann have indicated is a last resort. That is what the government have forced us to do. We have rearranged the business to facilitate the passage of this legislation and the disallowance of these regulations to assist thousands of Australians.