Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I just have to take a second to compose myself from my laughter at hearing that last speech. Senator Carr is lecturing the chamber and lecturing the crossbenchers about the time management of this very important piece of legislation. He and the Greens political party continue to express outrage at how they could be restricted in the debate they have on this bill. I've been in this chamber for a while and, regrettably, I sat through the Labor years, the six dark years of Labor in charge. Do you know, Madam Deputy President, in the Labor years we had 188 bills through this parliament guillotined with the support of the Greens political party—188 bills, most of them with not even one word spoken on them, not one word. We were required to vote in a sausage machine style on 188 bills the Labor Party put up in government, supported, I might say, by the Greens political party, who always are holier than thou.

I had to compose myself. Everybody knows that Labor lie—that's becoming an accepted norm in this chamber and, in fact, right across Australia—but we now know that the hypocrisy of the Labor Party and their mates in the Greens political party knows no bounds whatsoever. They lecture the crossbenchers—they think they're still at the CFMEU union—and think that by shouting at them, bullying them and standing over them, as they do in a CFMEU meeting, they can bully the crossbenchers into submission and into agreeing with them. But they don't like it when we remind them of not one bill—important though this one bill is on taxation—but 188. Half of them were fairly routine; I'll accept that. The other half were very important bills, and they were guillotined by the Labor Party without proper debate.

Senator McGrath interjecting—

There were 53, as my colleague Senator McGrath says, in one week—53 bills guillotined in one week, and many of them with not even a word. The Labor Party are complaining that, with this bill, we're going to allow the leaders of the parties to speak. That's a privilege that we never got in the Labor Party's administration. Not even was the then opposition leader allowed to speak.

If the Labor Party were serious about wanting to debate this bill, they would have done away with the last three hours of time absolutely wasted on having procedural motions on which they called for a division every time, every time losing about ten minutes that we could have used to actually have the debate that they're now complaining they're not going to have time for. The hypocrisy is absolutely breathtaking—188 bills guillotined, most of them without one word being spoken. We could have had two hours of debate by now.

We would have had to interrupt it for—and I hope you'll listen carefully—what will be a wonderful speech by my colleague from Queensland Senator Stoker. You may learn something. I hope you listen intently, because I know Senator Stoker's speech will be enlightening. If you take some notice of it, you'll be better senators on that side. I'm very much looking forward to Senator Stoker's speech.

But again can I point out—as I say, it is a struggle for me to compose myself—the rank hypocrisy of the Labor Party in complaining about a limited time for a debate when they've wasted three hours this afternoon—

Honourable senators interjecting—