Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I would just make the case that Senator Macdonald is correct, but his points of order were not upheld, because it has been a free-ranging debate—you are right—and Senator Macdonald is a beneficiary of the free-ranging debates.

But what we have is a government that is going to a double-D, and the cat was belled this morning when Antony Green told the joint parliamentary committee that in a double-D the government will get 38 senators, and in a half-Senate election they will get three out of six. That is what he said. Did they not explain that to you? When you did the deal, did they not explain that to you?

So this is a government that has pulled the wool over the eyes of this chamber already once today by how it voted. It is a government that has no policy agenda. It is pretending bills are urgent when they are not. But the greatest con on disabled people in this chamber is coming from those opposite, because they have no intention of trying to pass this bill before they call the double-D—no intention whatsoever of passing this bill, because you are calling a double-D.

It is a double-D that will have terrible ramifications in this country. It will mean there is no chance to save and rescue the National Broadband Network from the indolent minister, the indolent board and the indolent management, whose stock in trade is to consistently mislead the Australian public about what is really going on. There will be no chance to save the Clean Energy Finance Corporation when the double-D sitting is held and those opposite use their numbers in both chambers, if they are lucky enough to win, to wipe it out. There is no way to protect Australian workers from the penalty rate cutting that will take place by those opposite. There is no way, when they get back to it, that the GST will not be increased, because, just as John Howard said in the last few days, you are going to have to go back and increase the GST. It is in their DNA.