Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Patrick's motion today flies in the face of everything that Senator Patrick stands for. I'd even accuse Senator Patrick of being a procedural wonk, in the sense that he is always a stickler for the process, yet what we see here today is Senator Patrick coming into the chamber and seeking to rearrange the business of the Senate. Senator Patrick understands, like all of us in this place, that it is the role of the government to set the agenda of the Senate and the government of the day is entitled to that privilege. So Senator Patrick coming in here and seeking to disrupt the order of business for the day really does fly in the face of everything that Senator Patrick has always said he stands for.

There is a time in the agenda of every parliamentary sitting week when crossbenchers and backbenchers are able to bring forward private senators' business, and Senator Patrick knows full well that the time afforded for bringing forward private senators' bills is that time. But, no, today we see him coming in here and trying to disrupt the order of business on the basis of him wanting to be able to grandstand on a particular issue. One of the other things I find really quite extraordinary in relation to this particular action that we're seeing here today is that this is about seeking to suspend standing orders to rearrange the order of business in this place. What we've seen so far is much debate around the particular matter on which Senator Patrick is seeking to suspend standing orders, but we actually haven't seen much debate around the suspension in and of itself.

We're sitting here and we're talking about issues of things like integrity, issues around people and parties not telling the truth, issues of corruption et cetera. It is really quite extraordinary that, while we're sitting here, sitting on the other side of the chamber is a party that's prepared to go to the next election lying to the public. Consider the irony of the fact that a member in the other place, Julian Hill, was prepared to put a post on his Facebook page and his Twitter account that called the Prime Minister a liar whilst at the same time lying to his constituents. If we really want to have a look at some of the things that are going on at the moment, we should probably start calling out some of the absolute lies.

Despite the fact that Mr Albanese and everybody on the other side know that they are lying about the cashless debit card, they're quite happy to continue to lie. If we're going to sit here and talk about integrity, maybe we should get a little bit of integrity in the debate that's going on. With the opportunity that I have as I'm standing here, I would like to put on the record again that the government of which I am a member, the Morrison-Joyce government, has never forced, doesn't force and never will force age pensioners onto the cashless debit card. I wonder how many times between now and the election there will be lies told by those on the other side.