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

Do you mean like the one you made before the last election that you would not change the passenger movement charge? What a joke! You have egg all over your face, both in the content of your policy and in the procedural chaos that we have seen today. This is a stunt. Labor will oppose this amendment, but I would say this: we can have a long debate about the lack of sensible process around the legislation, and we have amendments being floated around between senators and the government that most of the Senate have not seen—

Government senators interjecting—

Democracy? You were not even able to move it last time. They could not even work it out, in time, to have a vote in the Senate. We have seen Senator Cash sprinting to Senator Culleton's office, desperate to get his vote, to make sure he turned up for this vote. We have seen the unseemly huddle over there of two cabinet ministers trying to get a deal on the floor of the Senate because they were worried about a loss after the loss last night.

Leaving aside all that chaos, this is no way to run a government. This is chaos, this is dysfunction, this is division, and the things the Australian people want us to focus on—jobs, living standards, education, health; the things that matter to Australians out there—are being ignored by this government as they focus on desperately trying to cover up the chaos and the dysfunction that has now come to characterise the Turnbull government.