George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent Senator Brandis from moving that the Senate take note of the President’s ruling forthwith.

Mr President, without reflecting on your ruling—which I do not do—the fact is that the motion upon which the Senate lately deliberated was a motion that the motion be put.

The motion that was before the chamber at the time that motion was deliberated upon was not the motion that Minister Ludwig is now reading. And we know what this is all about because in the original motion, the only motion that was before the chamber at the time the question was put, was a guillotine motion which would have included, among other things, eliminating question time. Plainly, embarrassed by the revelation that that motion would have eliminated question time, the government sought late in the piece to change the motion to reinstate question time. But you know, Mr President, and every senator present in this chamber is well aware, that the government’s original plan was to eliminate question time.

Everyone accepts that both sides of this chamber when in government have on occasions moved the guillotine, moved the gag. That charge has been levelled against us in interjections from the government benches, and it is true. During the Howard government, we moved the guillotine on a number of occasions, but never—and I think you will find, if you look at the precedent books, not once in the history of the Australian Senate—has a guillotine motion eliminated question time. This is a new depth in parliamentary practice which has been imposed by this government with the willing connivance of the Greens—whose heroic talk about parliamentary scrutiny, the role of the Senate and transparency in government is revealed for the fraud that it is—and, I am sorry to say, with the connivance and support of Senator Xenophon and Senator Fielding as well. They perhaps, to give them the benefit of the doubt, may have been lulled into not appreciating that the motion before the chamber at the time was to eliminate question time. So let the record show that today, 25 November 2010, for the first time in the history of this Senate, an Australian government, in moving the guillotine, sought to eliminate question time. How can any Labor senator or any Greens senator ever again, without obvious hypocrisy, talk about openness in government, parliamentary scrutiny or transparency?

If it is possible that it could be worse than that, it is, because we know that this was a pre-ordained plan. Senator Conroy, the stupidest person in this place, gave it away yesterday.