Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Cormann cites Paul Keating's L-A-W law tax cuts as another instance of a breach of faith with the Australian people, but I think this one even eclipses that—this promise was so stark, so clear and completely without qualification. That is why we are not simply standing back and waving this procedural matter through this place. That is why on a joint select committee we have opposed other procedural matters, that is why we opposed the proposition for an extra sitting week, that is why we opposed motions for the variation of hours and that is why we are seeking to handle these carbon tax bills in a different manner in this place today. To do otherwise, to sit back and simply wave this particular matter through at this point in time, would see the coalition being complicit with the government in breaking its election commitment to the Australian people. The numbers are no doubt against us in this place and on this matter, but that is no reason for us not to do our job. That is no reason for us not to seek, at each and every stage of the consideration of this package of legislation, to hold the government to account. That is our job. We have sought to do that with previous procedural motions to grant additional time and days and we seek to do so again today.

We used every opportunity available to the coalition in the other place to seek to defeat this legislation and to thwart its progress, not because, as we are accused by those opposite, we are being mindlessly negative or because we are oppositionist in nature—far from it. This is an incredibly cooperative, incredibly constructive and incredibly positive opposition. We have a direct action plan as an alternative to the government's carbon tax agenda, which has been very well articulated by Mr Hunt in the other place and by Senator Birmingham in this place. We do have an alternative plan. Every time today, every time over the previous weeks and every time in the weeks ahead when the government says, 'You're a negative, oppositionist coalition,' we will say, 'That's wrong,' because we do have a clear plan and we do have a clear alternative.

The matter that is before us here, moved by Minister Ludwig, is that the bills may proceed without formalities and may be taken together. We think that they should not be taken together. We think that this package of 19 bills should be considered in sequence. Each of them deserves proper scrutiny. The government have sought to thwart proper scrutiny by passing a motion in this place which will see a guillotine come into effect in the weeks ahead in November. As I said this morning: on the one hand the government make great play of the fact that they consider this legislation should—as they say—be scrutinised appropriately, so they schedule an extra week; on the other hand they move a motion to put into effect a gag, or a guillotine. Call it what you will, the upshot is the same: the purpose of it is to truncate debate. The purpose of it is to stifle debate. What we want to see is the maximum amount of sunshine cast upon these bills, because we know that did not happen in the other place. It was a very short debate in the House of Representatives. We know that that scrutiny did not take place in the joint committee established for that purpose. This was a joint committee, which I charitably suggest operated for two weeks—