Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I sincerely withdraw the comment I made about Senator Brandis, the Attorney-General, being the senior law person of this country.

Then, finally, someone obviously spoke to him and said, 'You'd better get things moving and actually do your job and start answering the questions.' So he begrudgingly started answering the odd question now and again. That cost this chamber hours, because he was refusing to do his job.

Then, of course, we lost more time when we, rightly, censured the Minister for Defence for saying that ASC could not build a canoe, which was a totally ridiculous comment to make. What did the government expect—that we would just suck it up when such accusations were being chucked around? Then, of course, on FoFA, they deliberately filibustered the debate for half a day when we tried to very sensibly address a huge flaw in that legislation. That was another day lost. Now they come in here and say that we should give up more time—because they now think that maybe they have the numbers. They have been re-counting, re-counting and re-counting, putting people on their speakers' list and putting their legislation on and off the agenda. First it is top of the list; then it is down the list. Really, do not come in here and expect us, at two minutes before going-home time, to be willing to discuss hours.

At the beginning of the week, we finally had a leaders and whips meeting—finally. The list of what they wanted to discuss was as long as your arm. Then some form of agreement was reached on what was going to be on the list. Then we got the hours motion with more bills stacked back on. Maybe that was because they thought they had the numbers then, whereas they did not think they had the numbers earlier in the week. Now that very important list of bills—there were seven in the previous motion—has just one bill on it. There is now only one urgent bill. This is not good management.

We do not believe that we should be sitting here to debate this bill because the government think they may have the numbers. What happens a bit later when they do not have the numbers? That was obviously what happened yesterday, when you started adding people to the speaking list because you did not have the numbers at that time. Therefore, you started stacking it up, wasting Senate time when there was other work that could have been done. The non-controversial bills could have been discussed. Because you did not manage it well enough, we still have not got through all of those so-called non-controversial bills. For example, with the adoption bill—though I do not think it is non-controversial—we were willing to debate it at that point because we were trying to help manage the chamber. That is a bad piece of legislation. The other legislation is bad legislation. You know it. You have not got the numbers to deal with it. We will not be supporting the suspension.