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

He says, 'I didn't say that.' What does this mean: 'The hours of meeting shall be 10 to adjournment and government business order of the day No. 1'—which is the registered organisations bill—'will be called on immediately and have precedence. The Senate shall adjourn after it has finally considered the bill listed above'? In order words, we have got the numbers, so we want to sit here until it is done. You could just own it, George. It is the exercise of numbers. But do not come in here at a later stage and tell the Australian Labor Party, when we want to resolve something—we want to bring something to a vote—that somehow that is an unreasonable thing. The government wants to finish the debate on this bill. It wants to ram it through tonight. It wants to get this bill resolved and it is clear that it does not want to have to deal with the set of amendments that Labor, and potentially the crossbench, are seeking to move. We are very clear about this. We do not believe the Senate ought be treated like this. We do not believe that the Senate ought be in the position where the Leader of the Government in the Senate comes in without notice and slaps down a—

Senator Brandis interjecting—

You really are talking a lot. There is a quite a lot on Twitter about you at the moment, Senator Brandis. We could say some of the things that Liberal MPs are currently talking about. Quite privately, LNP MPs were fuming over the comments. 'George has been such a shining example of good government,' said one, on the condition of anonymity, but I digress.

The point here is this: we had an orderly process for dealing with this piece of legislation—orderly to the point, I suppose, because the government finally actually listed it. But what we have is the Leader of the Government in the Senate coming in and slapping down a motion to enable this to be voted on tonight. This bill has been an example of this government's inability to manage its legislative program. This bill has been an example of a Prime Minister who goes out and demands a double disillusion, partly to clean out the crossbench—remember that was one of the reasons he used: to clean all the crossbench out. He said, 'This bill is so important, we are going to go to a double disillusion on it.' He gets a crossbench that he is not sure he can get the numbers on for this legislation. Then he refuses to list the legislation, despite the fact that this was the great fight that Malcolm Turnbull was going to have. This was the great economic reform—this legislation. He refuses to list it and now, finally, what we have is the government coming in and saying, 'We have to have the debate. We have to finalise it tonight, because we do not want the Senate to have tomorrow to debate it,' as would be normal. 'We want to finish it tonight, even if it takes all night.' That is no way to run a legislative agenda. (Time expired)