Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

The cold, hard reality is that this motion is just another attempt, firstly, to avoid scrutiny. There are some particularly important bills here. There are a couple of social security bills that have not even had anybody make one comment on them at all. There's also the very important live animal exports bill, which clearly sees a huge amount of dissent around the chamber, but we're all happy to guillotine that as well.

I would say: do not come into this place in the last two sitting weeks and ask us if you can have the last week off, because, if you do, the only thing you will be admitting to is that the Labor Party, in coalition with the Greens, would rather go home for an early Christmas than do their job, stand in this place and actually debate the legislation that is before the Senate because of their absolute incompetence in getting their legislative agenda through this year. We saw the debacle of last week. We've seen so many weeks when we've turned up in this place and gotten nothing done because you are not able to negotiate the legislative agenda in the place. You can't manage the chamber. And then, at the final hour, you come in here and do a dirty deal with those at the other end of the chamber to guillotine legislation. I would say the people of Australia are starting to see through the Labor Party. The Labor Party don't want scrutiny, they lack transparency and they'd rather go for Christmas pudding and turkey roast than stay here and do the job that the Australian public elected them to do.