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

I will. I challenge all the members of the Labor Party to come into the chamber tonight and defend this grotesque invasion of freedom of speech in this country.

Not only was the caucus railroaded but the committee process for the biggest change to media regulation in this country was limited to a one-day hearing in Canberra this week. There was no proper process and no proper investigation. We know that the government have gotten these things wrong time and time and time again. They need to go through the proper committee process if they are going to get the legislation right. They are chattering away on the other side of the dispatch box like a couple of twittering birds in a nest. Get up and defend the government's media regulation rather than coming in here like a coward and interrupting other members while they are speaking. If you want to speak, speak.

The final denouement of this legislation is to railroad these bills through the parliament tonight with a grubby deal with the crossbenchers in this hung parliament. All week the crossbenchers have come out and paraded themselves in front of the media doing their dance of a thousand veils for the press about how they were going to vote against this legislation or how, in order to vote for it, they needed extra inducements in this place for their electorates. They paraded themselves for the press gallery. They did their dance of a thousand veils, but, in the end, what did I predict on Monday morning? I predicted they would roll over and vote for the Prime Minister's legislation. And there is one reason: not one of the crossbenchers wants an election. Only the member for Kennedy and the member for Denison would be re-elected right now if there were an election, and they know it. They have much more support in their electorates than the member for Lyne, the member for New England, the member for Melbourne, the member for Fisher or the member for Dobell. So they have done a grubby deal with the government to stave off an election—

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