Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That intervening business be postponed till after consideration of government business order of the day no. 6, Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009.

I just wanted to note some of the very lengthy speeches that we have already had to endure during this period of traditionally short speeches and non-controversial matters. One could even assume, if one had a suspicious mind, that the opposition would once again seek to frustrate even bringing a bill on for discussion. This bill represents an historic restructuring of the telecommunications sector. Those opposite have spent all morning trying to avoid having to face up to the fact that this is a bill that they did not have the courage to put in place when they sold Telstra. This is a market structure that should have been put in place. Those opposite failed the test on economic credibility when they were in government; they failed to do any serious heavy lifting in microeconomic reform. This is a bill that was agreed to be brought on. Now those opposite have indicated—although I hope they are going to finally see their way to having the actual bill debated, to bring this on for debate.

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Parry interjecting—

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, there was some confusion, Senator Parry, you are correct. But you do not get to decide what the government’s business program is. This is the bill that the government would like, and needs, to bring forward to start the debate. Let us bring the debate on. Let us have the debate and let us stop the senseless filibustering, the outrageous oppositionism and the hijacking of this chamber that has gone on all week.

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I totally reject everything Senator Conroy has just said. Non-controversial legislation time commenced at 12.45 and it completed at 1.45. That left 15 minutes, so where is the filibustering if we are trying to talk out non-controversial time, Senator? So your first point is totally incorrect, from the evidence of the clock alone. Secondly, this rearrangement of business is brought on unannounced. You sought to have these bills brought on earlier in the week. At a whips meeting last night, it was agreed by the government and the Greens and us that the order of legislation would be as it appears on the red today.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is not true.

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That was organised last night at the whips meeting.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Greens don’t support you at all on that.

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They were not prepared to debate this particular bill today and we agreed with the Greens, and the government agreed with the Greens, and organised for the legislation as it appears in the order on the red today.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is not true.

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Conroy made one correct statement: the government does organise the business. And it did. It organised the red, and this bill appears well down that list. Senator Conroy, for whatever purpose, wants to bring this bill up, and yet in November last year Senator Conroy spent a week-long trip in Egypt instead of being here to debate the bill when it could have been brought on. There was a time and opportunity then. It was not brought on then. Now, all of a sudden, on the last day of the sitting week, he wants to bring it on for—what?—the period of about 15 minutes because he knows that we then go into question time at 2 o’clock and from question time we go into general business and other matters and the legislation will not continue until the next sitting fortnight.

Why do you want to debate it for 10 or 11 minutes? It just does not make sense. Senator Conroy must have some reason—whether he is embarrassed because he did not get it up last year, I do not know. Senator Conroy, the opposition will not be supporting you moving to change the order around for the sake of 11 minutes. What is the big issue of bringing it on for 11 minutes? It does not make sense. If it was that important your government should have put it on the red in the order it should have been. We are all prepared to move into the order. The next bill to be considered is the fairer private health insurance bill. We have Senator Cormann sitting here ready to go.

The allegation is filibustering. If that is true we could have very easily gone to 2 o’clock in non-controversial legislation. We did not. We facilitated the entire stream of legislation in a normal and orderly manner. Every speaker, I think—bar possibly one—spoke well below their allocated time so there was certainly no filibustering. In fact, quite often in this chamber I would love to go back to the Hansard and find the records. In fact, I might just do this, Senator Conroy. I would love to go back and find out how many ministers have spoken in non-controversial legislation longer than the shadow ministers. It is a complaint I have lodged with your manager on several occasions. We are expected to be brief and your ministers quite often go for the full 20 minutes—one of them is sitting in this room now. I think you need to check some of your facts about filibustering because we seem to be the more efficient party in this chamber.

We seem to be the party that actually gets work done. You come in here and constantly try to rearrange it. You cannot even allocate enough sitting weeks in a year when we give you thousands and thousands of opportunities to do so, and we end up with a bit of a mess. You try to fit legislation in where you cannot fit it in. You want to bring on a bill for 11 or 12 minutes. I cannot fathom the workings of the government, and I am sure the public cannot. I think the public will see this as we move towards the next election. You cannot organise your program properly. You also have to be cognisant of the fact that the government—whilst it is the government—does not have the numbers in this place. The opposition parties completely have the numbers in this place. We often give you warnings. I do not know how many times I have got up and warned the government of mismanagement of this place. On many occasions to assist the government we have had to help rearrange business. The government cannot run this chamber properly. We have to intervene constantly to do this.

The mess is clearly because the government does not listen to the Greens, the two Independents or the two minor party senators and the opposition when it comes to sitting weeks. We have flagged this—and Hansard will reflect—in July, August, October and November last year. We said, ‘Make sure you have enough sitting weeks in the program for 2010.’ When the calendar comes out, what does it have? Another extraordinarily low sitting year with huge gaps. That is mainly to facilitate not the business of this chamber, not the business of the parliament, but to fit in with the Prime Minister’s overseas travel itinerary. That is what the whole sitting schedule is designed around. It is nothing to do with the fair work of this place. You would get a lot more out of this chamber if we had a lot more sitting weeks. So you try to come in here and waste 11 minutes by rearranging the business. Senator Cormann is sitting here ready to go. We are not ready for the legislation further down the list and we will be opposing this rearrangement of business.

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to clarify the Greens position. I understand that Senator Parry said that we said in the whips meeting that we were not ready, and that is absolutely correct in the sense that we did not agree for this bill to be in the non-controversial time because we think it is an important bill and we have amendments that we wish to move. However, when the parliamentary liaison officer contacted our office this morning and said, ‘If it is not in non-contro, if it is, in fact, being debated in normal government time as a government bill, we will be happy with that.’ We did clarify it with the PLO.

So there are two points. Yes, Senator Parry is right: we said that we did not want it to be in non-controversial legislation. And we did clarify this morning that we were ready. We understood that the government had communicated that to the coalition. Obviously they did not or there was a breakdown in communication or the opposition are now not ready. I just want to clarify that the Greens are ready to debate this bill as a government bill but not as a non-controversial bill. In terms of the extra sitting weeks, I remind the coalition that the Greens put forward a motion to extend the sitting weeks which the coalition did not support. Just remember that: the Greens put in a motion to make sure that the chamber sat enough times to adequately deal with the legislative agenda. That was rejected by both the ALP and the coalition.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State and Scrutiny of Government Waste) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a remarkable intervention halfway through the discussion on a bill that I had addressed, that I was not going to speak to because we were in committee and was not going to speak to after that. We have the most rattled minister, apart from Minister Garrett, in the Rudd government jumping in and intervening. Senator Conroy, the simple fact is that you have had a miserable week because your judgment has been severely questioned. Your decision to bandy yourself around the country and accept largesse from anyone who made an offer has left you exposed in relation to what it is. You know that, under the ministerial standards, you have an obligation to ensure that whatever you do does not leave your or the government open, does not leave you or the government bare. What you have done this week with this ridiculous intervention at this hour, at five minutes to two, just shows that you are completely and utterly rattled. What it shows is that if you had wanted this bill on you could have done it well before now. The bottom line is that you are rattled and your decision this morning about whether NBN will be wholesale or retail—you are just desperately looking for the front page of the paper to divert from your complete and utter inadequacies.

You know and I know that this bill was never going to be debated today. You know and I know, from what we have heard from Senator Siewert, that this was never, ever going to be debated under non-controversial legislation. You owe the Manager of Opposition Business an apology. You called him gutless, as did that senator sitting behind you, who should have the guts to apologise. When you are wrong, you say sorry. Say sorry now, because you have completely and utterly misrepresented Senator Parry.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He doesn’t need your protection.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State and Scrutiny of Government Waste) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I know who I would rather have operating this chamber: Senator Parry, not those sitting behind you or Senator Conroy himself. When you go to bed tonight, Senator Conroy, and reflect on your week, I invite you to have a look at the tapes of question time when you have been speaking, because the body language says it all. They think you have made a complete and utter fool of yourself this week. They know you have severely compromised yourself. They know you have severely compromised the Rudd government and they know that they have had a miserable week on the back of your inadequacies and those of Senator Arbib and the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts in the other place. Have the good grace to apologise, because you intervened in the bill I was speaking to on the basis that Senator Parry had misrepresented the situation. Senator Siewert has shown that that is not so and you should apologise now.

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment Participation, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The pressure is really starting to show on that side, isn’t it? The cracks are starting to show, because this is all about ministers not being able to compete for time in this chamber with the absolutely incompetent Minister for Health and Ageing. We have debated for a whole week now a broken promise in the health portfolio which the Labor Party knows will not have the support of this chamber. We have wasted week after week on broken promise after broken promise in the health portfolio. They cannot manage their program and now you have ministers who are starting to crack up because they cannot get time on their agenda. If this legislation is so important why didn’t you put it at the top of the list? Why did you put a piece of legislation at the top of the list which you know does not have the support of the Senate, does not have the support of the Australian people and is not good legislation for the health system?

As your top priority for legislation this week you put forward a piece of legislation which will be bad for our health system and bad for patients across Australia, a broken promise which is there to hide the fact that this government has been an absolute failure in the health portfolio. You have delivered not one jot, not one thing. You promised the world but have delivered next to nothing. We have a minister here who clearly cannot fathom that Nicola Roxon is absolutely dominating the legislative agenda in the Senate, and the government in the Senate cannot get their pieces of legislation up; as a result, they have to resort to desperate tactics. They have to resort to attacking the Manager of Opposition Business in this chamber without foundation. If the minister thinks that his piece of legislation is so important he should tell Nicola Roxon to stop putting forward legislation which clearly does not have the support the Senate.

This is just a stunt. Last year we had to waste weeks because this heartless government wanted to cut patient rebates for cataract surgery in half. Weeks and weeks and weeks of time in the Senate was wasted, and here we go again. I can understand the frustration of Senator Conroy. I can well understand that other ministers are starting to get frustrated because none of their bills can get to the top of the list. Here they are, jumping up and down because they cannot win the debate in their Senate tactics committee. They cannot get the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister to get them up the list. They have only one strategy: a political strategy to come up with excuses as to why they have been such a failure in the health portfolio. This is all about coming up with a political strategy to justify to the Australian people in the lead-up to the next election why they have been such a failure in the health portfolio. It is nothing more and nothing less. Do you know what? I can understand why Senator Conroy is so frustrated. Clearly, with their failure to properly manage their program and with Nicola Roxon absolutely monopolising legislative time for the government here in the Senate, it must be very bad for him because he cannot get his legislation up. It has nothing to do with us. I absolutely agree with Senator Ronaldson: Senator Conroy should apologise to the Manager of Opposition Business for absolutely having misrepresented him. Apologise, Minister.