Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to briefly respond to some of the comments made by Senator Rhiannon impeaching my colleagues for coming in and speaking on this today. Let us go through the time line of how this bill got here. Did the speakers list change? Of course it did, because at 9.25am today we were advised that this bill was coming on straight away. We were advised late last night—after the government had rammed it through the House of Representatives in the hour before the House rose for the budget—that this bill was going to come on today after two other bills. At around 9.10am or 9.15am, we were told that it was coming on first, and then—during prayers!—we were told that it was coming on straight away, not even at 10 o'clock—first thing! Senator Rhiannon, if you want to impeach Senate colleagues for having the gall to speak on a constitutional amendment when the opposition was given minutes notice to speak on it, then that betrays your particular values. They are further betrayed by you describing people daring to oppose a motion as troublemakers.

The opposition has said that in principle the coalition supports putting beyond doubt the ability of the Commonwealth to make payments to local governments, but we have also said the Gillard government—I suppose in this case the allies—has failed to prepare the ground for this referendum and, so typical of this government, everything is rushed out at the last minute to generate a headline rather than a result. We saw that last Thursday when a phone call was not even made to the two most prominent coalition supporters of this proposal. Even when in Campbell Newman's home state, in his capital city, a few hundred yards from his office, the Labor Prime Minister did not make a phone call to him—and Campbell Newman has written to her advocating support for this.

We are not going to be distracted from the key task on 14 September—the referendum that is really going to be a referendum on this government. We will not oppose this legislation because in the end the people do have a decision to make and, quite frankly, there will be some coalition MPs and senators who express a different view. As I said previously with respect to this amendment, if the proponents try to use this as a political attack on the coalition because there happens to be a couple of members who express a different public view, then they are only doing their cause a disservice. If they want to make the level playing field uneven—I am providing advice here, Senator Rhiannon—the coalition will not try to corral people who have a genuinely held, different view on this issue, and nor should we. The government has put more effort into legislation for tax laws amendment bills and that is the process that is weakening this. I assume the amendment is going to fail but, in all good faith, I think it shows the weakness of the process this government has used.