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

Here we have the opposition complaining about the use of the guillotine and the gag. We have done some research and established that the Howard government used the guillotine 116 times—let me repeat that: 116 times—for such legislation as the Telstra privatisation legislation; the migration excision legislation; the wheat marketing legislation; Work Choices, which I will come back to in a minute; Welfare to Work and the Northern Territory emergency response. In other words, the opposition have used this guillotine many times. I know they will complain about amendments being brought in, but who remembers, under Work Choices, 100 pages of amendments being delivered 20 minutes before we started the debate in committee? The opposition knows how this place works. They have been there and they have done it before, so to start carrying on about its use when 116 times—