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

Crocodile tears, yes; thank you for that interjection. Senator Ludwig is simply just adopting the rhetoric of the lower house that we have no other excuse for failed policy other than, ‘Let’s blame the Senate,’ because the Senate seems to have this dark art of dealing with legislation that gets convoluted at times and it is very easy, from the House of Representatives perspective, to spin, ‘It’s not our fault; it’s the Senate’s fault.’ We are not going to wear that anymore at all.

I conclude my remarks by placing clearly on the record once again how cooperative this opposition has been with this government. I do not know why because we always get criticised about cooperation. In 2008 we gave up an extra 83 hours and, to be precise, 54 minutes to government business from our time and in 2009 we gave up 108 hours and 45 minutes of our time. We voluntarily gave this time to the government of the day. Senator Ludwig is indicating that there are fewer sitting weeks, so he believes that we should be giving more time. We have given more time than any opposition in the history of this Commonwealth to a government of the day, and the government of the day has responded by having fewer sitting weeks. I do not understand why the government is not standing up and saying: ‘We should be so thankful to have an opposition that is so considerate of government business time that they’ve given up their own time when they could have been debating issues of their own desire.’

I indicate, through you, Madam Acting Deputy President, to the government, to Senator Ludwig and to the Prime Minister that we are not going to do this any longer. We have allowed you to abuse the process, to abuse our generosity and we cannot do this anymore. We have given the government the equivalent of 4.6 sitting weeks for business in those hours that I indicated. They have squandered their time. They have not run the program effectively.

Now they get to the dying stages of this parliament and indicate that they want more sitting hours simply as a show of brinkmanship or as a show to the public. ‘Gosh, we’ve failed on some of our legislative policies. Our legislative agenda is in disarray. Let’s blame the Senate; let’s blame the opposition in the Senate.’ We will not have it. The record is now corrected. This government will not get additional hours; this government need to legislate properly through additional sitting weeks and also to manage their legislation program and not constantly withdraw or change their agenda because they do not have support or because they do not know how to manage the place. They certainly cannot organise their legislative agenda.