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

No, not the Wednesday lunch time one, Manager. I am referring to matters of public importance, which are dealt with on a regular basis to allow private senators to deal with matters. It will also be discarded. I would have thought that would be something that the Australian Greens would seek to champion. No, they are more than happy to use the jackboot of the guillotine to ensure that the coalition is denied the opportunity to voice its concerns, if it helps the Greens-Labor alliance agenda. Make no mistake, when I say 'Greens-Labor alliance', it is a Greens-Labor alliance, because the Greens are the ones who are dictating policy and it is the Greens who are dictating the administration of the Senate, as well. That is why the Manager of Government Business in the Senate was reduced, in such a humiliating way, to coming into this place with two separate motions. We knew straight away. We could not be told which motion would be favoured until the Labor Party had that puff of white smoke coming out from the Greens as to which motion they were going to vote for. They needed the permission of the Greens to determine which motion they would go for. How humiliating for a government to have to say, 'Well, we do not know what we are doing until we get word from the Australian Greens, and we only got the word this morning.'

We believe that the use—abuse, in fact—of the guillotine has now got to such an extent that we as a coalition will fight the abuse of the guillotine all the way. Senator Milne and the Labor Party will try to justify the unjustifiable, but all I would remind them is to remember what they said when the coalition used the guillotine 36 times. By the end of today you will have voted for the guillotine on over 110 bills in about half the time coalition guillotined 36. It is by your actions that you will be judged, not by your words.