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

They say there has not been enough time to debate. We were talking about it yesterday and we know there have been 35 inquiries, the most recent of which was reported just yesterday, where the opposition took the opportunity to talk yet again about the carbon tax. We have had an MPI basically every sitting day this year in which we have been talking about the carbon tax. Just yesterday we had another hour, and guess what? The debate and the comments are all the same; there is nothing new. They do not bring up something new; they are just saying the same thing over and over again. They had another hour yesterday and we are going to have another hour again today to talk about the economic and employment opportunities that would be foregone as a result of the Gillard government's carbon tax—it is essentially the same. The rule in here, for people who do not know, is that you have to have a different motion every day, so they change a few of the words and say the same thing. I could have written the script yesterday for what is going to be said today, because they do not come up with anything new. They are just using it as an excuse because they do not like the policy. They are using it as an excuse to say the same thing over and over again.

We have spent nearly 1½ hours this morning with the opposition trying to block extension of hours. All the legislation that I just talked about had extension of hours. The opposition has blocked extension of hours on more than one occasion. This morning they were trying to do the same thing again. We sat for hours in this place until very late in the evening talking about the pieces of legislation that I have just articulated when the opposition were in government, so they know very well that they are using this to block an important debate on carbon legislation that has far-reaching implications. Yes, we know it has far-reaching implications because we need to accept that we need to change the way we do business in this country if we are going to address this absolutely imperative issue. As I said, they do not come up with anything new; they just say the same thing over and over again.