Steve Fielding (Victoria, Family First Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I rise to make a short statement. We have had a very similar debate on this point before. The way it is going at the moment, it looks like we are going to do it daily. Quite clearly the government cannot manage this chamber. The shortfall of hours and days is their doing. The hypocrisy of it is that this government has set sitting days for next year at 50 days—37 per cent fewer than a decade ago—and now you are coming in here, at the last second of the last minute, trying to scramble around for more time. We are nearly babysitting you. You cannot manage your way out of a wet paper bag. You have literally got yourselves into a mess. Quite clearly you had plenty of opportunity to fix this problem. We will have the same problem next year, and you will be doing the same thing in the last few weeks of next year—I bet you. You are not going to learn. So we will not be approving this, and you folks need to seriously consider how you manage this chamber. We nearly have to babysit you in this regard. It is a joke. It is an insult to the Australian public to think that you actually approved 50 sitting days next year—that is, 37 per cent fewer sitting days. I spoke against it before. It is outrageous.