Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

The motion before the chair is to suspend standing orders so that someone can come in here and talk about issues with regard to what the Manager of Opposition Business suggests they should—to direct a member of parliament to answer particular questions. The Manager of Opposition Business should not be supported on this, because he himself will not answer any questions about these issues at all. Today on ABC NewsRadio he was asked seven times—I will spare you the beginning of it but his basic answer was, 'I'm not going to play these games, Marius.' Asked again, he said, 'It's irrelevant.' Asked again, he said, 'I'm not playing these games, Marius.' He would not answer anything today and yet he comes in here and moves a suspension of standing orders about these issues.

If we are going to go down this road, we will have suspensions of standing orders about the member for Indi and court cases that are being conducted with regard to her involvement. We will have suspensions of standing orders about the Manager of Opposition Business, about the Deputy Leader of the Opposition—about all the others that we know were involved in the Ashby incident. We now have a new explanation. They have gone from specific knowledge—they got pinged on that one—to now all having a different script. The Leader of the Opposition is now saying, 'The first I knew of all these things was when I read the newspapers on the Saturday morning.'

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