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

Why this is relevant is that those opposite cannot make the case for a positive vote in this chamber on this issue, because they are conning everybody who is listening. They are conning the disabled people in this country. You are calling a double-D. You have no intention of passing this bill before you call the double-D—no intention whatsoever of passing this bill. Don't you sit here and try and pretend that you are doing something for disabled people. Your plan is to use this bill to disguise the fact you have no agenda left and you have pulled the best con—I take my hat off to you, Senator Cormann, as I said earlier. You really have taken the Greens for a ride. Paul Keating said, 'Always back self-interest.' Well, those mugs down there did not understand what their own self-interest was. They were bent on revenge, and you have played them on a break. You have sucked them in, and this country will be far the worse for it because of this double-D that you are planning—the double-D that makes this bill not urgent, Senator Macdonald.

Senator Ian Macdonald interjecting—

You can sit there and talk and talk and talk, but this bill is not urgent.