Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the chamber. This is quite an extraordinary motion for the government to come in and move at these earliest days of consideration of legislation from the government. The Senate sat for the previous two sitting weeks, during which we dealt largely with ceremonial business and address-in-reply business, and in that time we cooperated with the government for the passage of one urgent bill that it had identified. We're now on only the second real sitting day of the Senate, getting down to genuine business, and the government is coming in, seeking in an opaque way without prior notice, to put in place arrangements that it says will give extra flexibility, and then saying, 'We're not intending to use that at present.' We should be getting down to business. It's on the Notice Paper. We should get into debating the bill, and if the government wants to move motions later, it should do so in the ordinary way, not through this very unconventional practice.