Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Fifield, you are right: it is not on. That is why we as a coalition have moved this motion today: that the Senate take note of the unprincipled attacks—because they are unprincipled. When you sit the Senate for the shortest time in over half a century and then demand that it hurry up, it is tantamount to deception of the Australian people.

The government simply seem to have no restriction on who or what to blame in relation to their failures, and I think that, after all these years of listening to Mr Rudd, the Australian people will not accept this nonsense that is now being peddled by Labor in relation to the Senate somehow being obstructionist. The Senate has a role—and a vital role. Let us not forget that up until just a few decades ago—not that long ago—the Labor Party still had in their platform the desire to abolish the Senate. They knew it was politically unsaleable and unpalatable to the Australian people, so they said, ‘Yes, we’ve got rid of that from our platform’. But everything else about their actions in this place tells us that, if they could have their way, they would abolish the Senate. They do not want us to examine legislation.

Indeed, this morning, on the airwaves, Mr Albanese was saying that the Senate was trying to scrutinise the legislation too much. Oh, that Labor themselves had scrutinised the pink batts debacle! Four more Australians would be alive, one person would not have severe deformities as a result of injuries and 174 house fires would not have occurred. That is the legacy of not scrutinising programs properly, trying to bypass the Senate and the proper way of doing things. If the Labor Party had considered the impact of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme more carefully, they would have realised what a bad scheme it was. And it was courtesy of further review in this place that a lot of the faults became exposed.