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

The reality is that, in the time that we have been standing in here since Senator Duniam moved this motion to bring forward a bill that is so terribly important to our defence community, we could have actually had the whole thing passed. We didn't needed the Manager of Government Business in the Senate to spend her entire five minutes just giving us a filibuster blast about what she thinks.

But there are a couple of things that the Manager of Government Business in the Senate mentioned that I think are worth reiterating. First, she just threatened to guillotine a whole heap of bills in this place before we move to the Closing the Gap statement. I think that just goes to show the kinds of tactics that are likely to be used by the government in order to force things through without the appropriate debate that this place is here to do. The purpose of the Senate is debate, so threatening a guillotine just because we've asked for a bill that we think is really important to our veteran community—a bill that has total bipartisan support, a bill that the shadow minister in the other place spoke on for only a matter of seconds—is, I think, a pretty sad indictment.

The other thing, too, is that the Manager of Government Business in the Senate also made comments about being embarrassed. Well, I can assure you the coalition is not embarrassed about the position that we have taken on every piece of legislation that has been brought through this place. It is our job to have a position. We take a position because we believe it's in the best interests of the Australian public, our community, our businesses and our national security and sovereignty. So we are not embarrassed about the position we've taken on any bill that has come into this place. I will make sure that we put that on the record. I think the only party in this place that should be embarrassed about the positions it's taking is the one opposite. We will let the people of Australia make that decision when those opposite eventually let us know when they're intending to go to the polls.

As my colleague Senator Duniam said, I will not continue this debate, but I would suggest to this place that it would be a very good gesture to the veteran community of Australia if we moved this bill immediately so that we could allow them the certainty that you seemed to think was so important when you sought for it to be part of the cut off.