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

Yes, exactly. As a result of the proroguing of this parliament, the Prime Minister has cancelled all government business, meaning that Australians will have to wait longer for prospective child care changes, just to use one example. It means that the Prime Minister has used his position in advising the Governor-General in a way that I would have thought, after 1975, would never happen again.

As we know, the Prime Minister and the government have shown complete political contempt for a democratically elected chamber of this parliament—and for what? So that it can call a double dissolution election just to clear out the crossbenchers; a crossbench that this government is largely incompetent in negotiating with. It is a group of senators that the Prime Minister has labelled 'feral' because they will not be his lap-dogs, because the government want to hide what they are doing from scrutiny. This is a government that has brought down an iron curtain of scrutiny to ensure that Senate committees are treated with contempt; that government senators, where they can get away with it, filibuster their way through scrutiny on committees; and that public servants are bullied and intimidated behind the scenes to not give honest answers—