Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Mr President, I rise on a new point of order. Senator Conroy raised a point of order about the minister failing to answer the question. I do not know whether you feel intimidated by Senator Minchin’s intervention, but it was a legitimate point of order for Senator Conroy to raise and unrelated to questions of noise in the chamber—the sort of noise that we are now hearing. The reality is that it was a serious point of order about Senator Coonan talking about the Labor Party for four minutes and failing to answer a question that concerns a lot of rurally based Australians.