Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, I appreciate that you have drawn our colleague's attention to that standing order. I do think that, if we were ever to have an integrity commissioner in this place, the previous speaker's comments would be exactly the kind of thing that would be referred in the first instance. I too would like to take note of the answers to questions posed to Senator Conroy this afternoon. In doing so, I go to the issue of the extent to which a question like that, which was posed in such a way as to provide an opportunity for Senator Abetz to come into this place and make such a personal attack on a colleague, belies the extent to which we try to have some integrity in the way we operate in question time. To use question time as an opportunity to frame a personal attack on someone in this way is pretty low. But are we supposed to be surprised when we hear of this today? The questions in question time today were all over the place. The challenge we have as a government is to see a coherent message around economic policy, integrity and opportunities. We had a spate of questions today that did not seem to make any sense at all. They seemed to be relying on the latest stories in the press—