Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I had an alternative proposal, unfortunately. I was going to encourage Senator Siewert to deal with some of her significant amendments so that we could make progress on those. In relation to those matters that you highlighted—I am looking at some of my notes to get the order right—my preference would be to deal with the Greens amendments in this area: those on sheet 5729, although we have dealt with one in the centre of that, and sheet 5744. There are a whole range of others. Today we have dealt with a fair few government amendments. I wanted the minor parties and the Independent to have an opportunity to progress some of their matters, because I think either we both disagree with them, so we can then get rid of them quite quickly, or we both support them, in which case we will test them with the Independent and Senator Fielding. I was looking at how to confine this, to effectively leave some of the tougher debates for a bit later on.