Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

I might make a couple of short observations about this question. Senator Duniam, as he knows, is making it up as he goes along. If we want to entertain a world in which letters between the government and former senator Birmingham or letters to Senator Cash or others are suddenly out there, I think that's an interesting set of views about how those sorts of discussions ought to be undertaken.

I note that we had a request to table documents from Senator Bragg this afternoon and leave was denied. The course of action before that was a chaotic attempt to derail the procedures in the Senate over the course of the last short period. I don't think that's in the interests of the couple of hours that we have left to us, during which it is anticipated that we'll be dealing with a condolence motion. I think we ought to have some regard to that. The government will not be giving leave for the tabling of documents this afternoon while these procedures are occurring.

If the opposition want to posture around questions of environmental management following their period in government, where they had the former Prime Minister simultaneously holding multiple ministries, I'd say their processes around these issues were a complete shambles and open to being knocked over in the courts, which caused a substantial amount of damage and uncertainty because they had so corrupted and debauched the processes of government. Fine. If they want to spend time dealing with that, no problem. If the coalition want to pretend that they are being defenders of the arts and local content, be my guest. Nobody on the planet believes that proposition after their 10 sordid years of offshoring arts and demeaning the arts and all of the associated creative industries. Fine, but it is a symptom of a coalition that doesn't have the wherewithal for policy development but is only interested in parlour games in parliament here.

My view is that what we ought to do is deal with the matters in front of us as expeditiously as possible and move through to the condolence motion before we end up not being able to do all the things that we need to be able to do this afternoon to provide an orderly end to the Senate processes.