Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I had hoped that we could get through these two weeks, deal with the legislative agenda and not have the Liberals come down here and hijack the chamber. It appears that they want to continue to oppose a sensible amendment to the Constitution to give local government recognition. That is what they are on about and that is what they are here to argue. Bizarrely, the way they have decided to prosecute their case is by preventing the chamber from getting onto the local government referendum bill. Instead, they are arguing for a suspension so they can debate the issue—when all they had to do was wait 10 minutes and they could have had the debate they say they want to have.

Apart from all that, they could have raised it between leaders or they could have raised it in a range of other ways. But instead they turn up in this chamber, try to up-end it with a stunt and then argue that they are being the rational Liberals that they are not. That is rejected. It is bizarre in the extreme, when you look at the actions of the Liberals. They are all over the place on this issue, like a dropped pie.

When you look at the issues currently before us, fact 1 is that constitutional recognition had bipartisan support, or so I thought, at the federal level. I am now starting to doubt that, quite frankly. The government supports constitutional recognition of local government; the coalition, I thought, supported it; and the minor parties and the crossbenchers support it. The vote earlier this month was almost unanimous. Only two members of the House of Representatives voted against this proposal. Fact 2—

Senator Brandis interjecting—

is that local government will continue to be the responsibility of state governments—

Senator Brandis interjecting—