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

It is now 400! I think the Prime Minister has been on the phone to him saying, ‘You had better correct that.’ So the record is now corrected, yet again, and it is a 400-page document. A 400-page document which has been in the possession of the government now for days on end could surely have been read, considered, digested and provided to this place.

What the government need to tell Senator Xenophon, the Greens and Senator Fielding is this: what is the importance of delaying the release of these documents by what I fear will be only seven days? Why can’t it be released whilst the parliament is still sitting? They said they are going to release it, but why can’t they release those documents now or early next week? What is the work that needs to be done that cannot be done over the next few days? That is the threshold question to which we have not been given an answer and, until we have been given a cogent answer as to the reason why it cannot be tabled late in November but can be tabled early in December, we should demand that no further consideration of this legislation be had until we have that documentation.

We would be derelict in our duty if we were to allow this legislation that is before us to pass and to be subjected to an insulting ministerial statement this afternoon without knowing what the documentation reveals. It is documentation that clearly has been revealed to Labor senators such as Senator Lundy but not to the coalition or to the crossbenchers. It is contemptuous of this place. The minister stands in breach and in contempt of orders of this Senate. The time has come for the Senate to stand up. The time has come to see whether or not the Greens, Senator Xenophon and Senator Fielding are willing to match their rhetoric with real action and, to borrow a term, direct action or whether it will simply be the rhetoric and the Labor-Greens alliance protecting the minister. (Time expired)