Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I do actually suspect, Senator Lambie, that if the Senate had used that process in ways consistent with the original intent—that the motions be put without any debate or opportunity for individual senators to make a contribution—the motions would ordinarily have been largely noncontroversial by their nature. If you go back through the past practice of this chamber, you will see that that is indeed what the original intent of that process was.

Senator Lambie, if senators had simply done that throughout history, we probably would never have got to the point that the Procedure Committee and the chamber got to in relation to the consideration of this. There are probably many other points of congratulations and noting that could have been achieved without us reaching that point where the chamber made the decision that it did in relation to the management of motions.