Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

They were obviously deliberately deceived and the government will receive its punishment in full measure on election day, which will hopefully be sooner rather than later, so that people can get the opportunity to have the vote on a carbon tax that they did not have at the last election. The next election will be a referendum on the carbon tax. I look forward to the election day, which will hopefully be this year or next year and not in 2013, because I do not think the public can tolerate this government much longer. I look forward to giving the public the opportunity in full measure to wreak their punishment on this bad government, which is introducing a carbon tax in spite of the promises it made before the last election.

This motion to extend sitting hours to debate the government's broken promise has no legitimacy. They have applied a gag on the debate and yet they have said they need more time to debate it. Just contemplate the illogicality of that position. Apparently they have to gag this debate but they need more time to debate it, so they need to have extra sitting hours to debate it which are not in the schedule in spite of the fact that they are still gagging the debate. Obviously, the opposition welcomes the sitting of the parliament, but let's just take the parliament through this process from the beginning. The government decided to truncate the selection committee process. They trashed parliamentary procedures. They decided not to allow the Selection Committee to refer these bills to the five specialist committees in the House of Representatives that could be looking into each of these pieces of legislation. Instead they established a joint select committee. The only purpose of this joint select committee—

Mr Bandt interjecting—

The only purpose, Member for Melbourne, of the joint select committee is to get around the Selection Committee process and to not refer these bills to the five specialist committees in the House of Representatives.

Mr Bandt interjecting—

Do not worry, Member for Melbourne, you will get your punishment too on election day—

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