Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I speak to Senator Macdonald’s motion to make this key point. The opposition have indicated that they oppose the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2010 before the chamber. That is accepted and is a perfectly legitimate position for them to take. They have argued that there would not be enough time to debate the bill properly under these arrangements. We sought yesterday to provide an extra three hours of sitting to debate this bill last night. The opposition determined not to support that and, therefore, denied themselves three hours of debate.