Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, sucking the life out of the Australian Labor Party. That is what the Australian Greens are doing and, lemming-like, the Australian Labor Party just march towards the cliff. They know what is going to happen. They still have three days. I somehow think the reason they have sought to truncate this debate is that they are not sure that they could have kept the whole Labor caucus together in relation to this issue for the next couple of weeks. The Labor Party also need to explain to this place whether Senator Stephen Conroy is going to make a contribution in this debate and put on the table how strongly he feels about the need for a carbon tax. I somehow think that he will not be making a contribution and that they will be seeking to put him out of his misery more quickly by having this legislation voted on earlier than anticipated.

The Manager of Government Business in the Senate also needs to advise the Senate of why they came into this place, moved an extension of hours and days—indeed an extra sitting week—on the basis of the need to debate the carbon tax. That was the reason. Some might call it a deceit but nevertheless it was the reason given—a reason that we now know does not stack up, because the very rationale for it has now been swept away. We gave up private coalition opposition time in this place to help get the carbon tax debate through this chamber, to cooperate with the government to ensure that we could fully ventilate the issues in relation to the carbon tax.

And what does the government do? It simply throws that generous behaviour by the opposition back in our faces by saying, 'If you give us an extra half a day for this debate—thank you very much—we'll truncate the debate by a full week.' Everything this government does, from the 'no carbon tax' promise to the promise of an extra week in this place to debate this issue, is based on falsehoods and misleading, which is completely unacceptable to us as an opposition. That is why we will be voting against this measure by the government—because the parliamentary process deserves to be honoured.