Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I want to briefly make a couple of comments on this motion. I have obviously arrived in the chamber in the middle of a very interesting debate but, as I understand it, we are having a suspension of standing orders debate because the government refused to allow Senator Hanson-Young leave to make a short statement in relation to the minister's response to the return to order. I would say to the government: I recall that as a minister I—and other ministers in the government, when we were on that side—allowed such statements to be made by leave quite regularly. I admit I probably allowed two or three minutes, to make sure people were limited, but it is part of the give and take of how you manage the chamber. As a result of the government's refusal to debate the issue, we have now had a lengthy amount of time spent on a suspension of standing orders debate simply to allow the senator a reasonable opportunity to make some statements in relation to this. On that basis, as Senator Carr has indicated, the opposition will be supporting this suspension. I would encourage the government to consider, perhaps, having a little bit more courtesy in how it deals with other senators in this chamber, just as governments of both persuasions have had to deal with senators across the political divide on many occasions.