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

This Senate deserves the right to properly scrutinise legislation. Sometimes there may be proposals for bills to operate under time management. But that should be time management in which there is at least consideration, bill by bill, for some questions to be put, for some questions to be asked and for some amendments to be scrutinised. But, no, that's not the way this government wants to work. What this government did this morning was simply to come into the chamber knowing that the time allocated for the consideration of four bills would be just 14 minutes. Two of those had not even a second of commentary allowed in this chamber before. Cast your minds back to the lead-up to the last election. What were we promised by Mr Albanese? What were we promised by Senator Wong? What were we promised by the Labor Party?