Rex Patrick (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, 'hypocrite' is the word that springs to mind here, in that Senator Wong is seeking to restrict debate on this particular matter.

Last week what I saw happen was that the Labor Party stood outside this chamber and suggested that, on tax cuts, they would only support stage 1; they wouldn't support stage 2. The first thing they did when they walked into the chamber was move a motion to support stage 1 and stage 2. That left me relatively confused. What I then drew from that was that there was to be an extended debate, a filibustering of the whole process, and for that reason we agreed with the government that it was just a tactic. But I don't understand exactly what is happening here. We'd like to have quite a lengthy discussion on this. We would have liked to have dealt with the bills separately. That, of course, has been denied us by an agreement by two parties that have shared the love inside the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security but not the information.