Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I just wonder whether Senator Sterle missed the memo from his leadership. We're still here—to the people in the gallery—not for any reason other than that the Australian government, who have the numbers to pass this bill, are not doing what they need to do to pass the bill. I've already explained to the chamber a couple of times now that the Australian government have the majority of votes in this place to progress this bill but refuse to do so because they refuse to cooperate on a range of matters. This is typical of the Australian Labor government. Here we are, five days on from when this bill came in for its second reading debate. We're now in the committee stage, and nothing has happened. Nothing has progressed.

If you listened to Senator Sterle's contribution, you'd know he's passionate about the resources sector. He's passionate about what it does for the hardworking men and women of his home state. If that is absolutely the case then I would say to Senator Sterle that he should go and have a word with his Senate leadership about what they need to do to get this bill moving, because right now all they're doing is sticking their fingers in their ears and saying: 'No, it's our way or the highway. We want everything our way, and we're not going to work with anyone else to get anything else happening. Just vote with us. It's what your job is. Rubberstamp our stuff.'

As we know, the coalition support this legislation, but equally we support and defend the right of our crossbench colleagues to interrogate this legislation to their heart's content, and we will back that in. We will back that in until, of course, we have some cooperation from this intransigent government that doesn't care about things like the cost of living, for example. Here we are in a Senate-only sitting week, and we all thought at the beginning of this week: 'It's a bit weird that we're allowing this debate to just go on. Oh, well, we'll go along with it for a bit.' I think we all knew why. Deep down, in the pit of our stomachs, we understood that the government, because they had nothing to do this week but they'd recalled us all to Canberra and wanted to save face, they just had to pad it out. So this is convenient for them. They make a big song and dance about it, but they are quite happy and relieved that we're at the end of this week and are still sitting here debating the first piece of legislation that was on their agenda for the week.

None of it has anything to do with the cost-of-living crisis created by the Labor government, the Labor cost-of-living crisis. Let's not forget that promise to bring down power prices. We're talking about energy in relation to this piece of legislation. Well, what about honouring the promise that was made to Australian households to bring power bills down by $275, or any of the other cost-of-living horrors being faced by Australian households and businesses at the moment? There's not a peep out of the Australian government. They just want to slag us off, call us names, demand things be their way and then send in poor old Senator Sterle to read out some speech notes written, I dare say, by the minister's office, when he seems to have missed the memo that they're the ones in charge. The ball is in their court.

We could move on right now if they happened to be in a cooperative mood. Instead, in true Labor fashion, it is their way or the highway. Australia: this is why the bill's bogged down—because the Australian Labor Party are so arrogant that they won't do anything to assist with other issues that face this chamber.