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

The duplicity dripping out of that Pecksniffian pocket of the Senate is just sickening. Here we have the Australian Greens combining in their alliance with the ALP to shut down this parliament three days early. Three days early they have combined with the ALP to guillotine through 20 bills by the end of the day without a single word having been spoken on those bills. And the reason for the guillotine, the reason for this abuse of parliamentary process and the abrogation of parliamentary duty by Senator Brown, the Australian Greens and the ALP, is that they do not want to sit the extra three days that have been on the parliamentary calendar since day one. Why is that? It is because Senator Brown and Senator Milne want to scuttle out of this place to go to Durban. They are the absentees, and what they are now putting up before this place is a ruse to suggest that somehow there are absentees from both sides to cover up for the fact that they have deliberately forced the government not to sit next week for those three days so that they can scuttle off to Durban and be absentees—the whole lot of them—for a full three days!

It has been accepted practice—and I will not delay the Senate much longer—that people are granted leave of absence in circumstances where the whips believe it appropriate and in circumstances where we do not seek to inquire into each other's business.