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

in their first week to stop senators doing what we were sent here to do which is to debate legislation. Having already forced this Senate to sit in July, just days after new senators took their seats, and having already brought forward debate on the carbon bills from 14 July, what we have seen is this government bullying, cajoling, and pressuring the crossbench into shutting down debate after just two days.

I indicated yesterday that the opposition had on Tuesday offered to give up our time not only this morning but also this afternoon for further debate on the carbon price bills. This Leader of the Government in the Senate did not do me, the opposition or any senator, as far as I am aware, the courtesy of even responding to that offer. The response that we did get was the motion moved yesterday, without notice, in which the government sought unsuccessfully to bring the debate to an end by lunchtime that day. So I say this to the crossbench: we accept your right to have different views on the substantive issues before the chamber—and you will have different views on the substantive issues. We accept your right to debate them; we accept your right to vote the way you wish to vote. What I say to the crossbench is: the chamber does not need to operate in this way. The chamber does not need in the first week of the sitting of the new Senate to have no less than five votes to shut down debate and to have three or four days of procedural debate because the government wants to shut down debate. It is not because they have to get the bill through; the bill would have got through. All of you, or your staff, were at the meeting of leaders and whips and you know that the bill would have passed this fortnight—