Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Ronaldson, with all due respect, your comments do not help. We indicated that we had issues with this bill. Senator Milne has been working extremely hard on this. Even though the government wants to put this under ‘non-controversial legislation,’ we indicated that we had amendments and that we still wanted to talk about them. We have been trying to facilitate this program all week, so I really resent being accused of trying to hold up the agenda when we indicated that there were a couple of bills on this list on which we have more extensive comments and amendments and on which we may even want to divide.

This bill is an important one for us. If the government want to pull it and discuss it at a later hour, they should pull it. But do not blame us for suddenly changing the rules. Apparently it was put at the top of the list so that it could be dealt with more fully. So please do not have a go at us when we are just doing our job and have been trying all week to facilitate the agenda.

Question negatived.