Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It just leads me to think that for some reason Labor Party senators have absolutely nothing to do. Although I wish they would attend some committee meetings, many of which they set-up and then do not bother to attend. I say this the whole chamber—people organise their time from 3 pm to 3.30 pm to take note of answers, so you set these committee meetings up at 3.35 so that can happen. If this is going to become the norm from the Labor Party and the Greens, well just tell us so that we can make sure that these committee meetings are not set-up. We can tell the minister, with the most important ministerial statement in a long, long time, that we are all waiting for 3.30 and do not bother coming until six o'clock. Perhaps this is the strategy of the Labor Party. Here is a good news story on defence. The Labor Party are embarrassed because that is something they never did. They never had a defence white paper that was funded. They never had a white paper on defence that talked about any shipbuilding. Perhaps it is their strategy today to waste time so that this good news story of the minister's ministerial address does not get some airplay. I do not know what the strategy is, but it is a pretty poor one in any case.