Steve Fielding (Victoria, Family First Party) Share this | Hansard source

Quite clearly, the government in this chamber cannot manage itself out of a wet paper bag. Seriously—it is an absolute joke. You have yourselves in a heck of a mess and should be making sure that we continue the debates that we have in front of us. You are trying to rearrange hours to fit in the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme legislation. I will make it clear: I do not think we should be doing any agreement before Copenhagen and I will not be supporting any move to facilitate that legislation this side of Christmas.

Secondly, how dare you come in and ask for extra hours when in just the last sitting period you approved 50 sitting days for next year—nearly 40 per cent down on what it was a decade ago? It is a disgrace. You know it avoids scrutiny. You know that having shorter sitting weeks means you can come in here in the last two weeks to try to ram things through. You sit there blank faced. You cannot be serious. In the last sitting period you said 50 days would be enough. It is not right and it is not on. I will not be supporting these extra hours. We will have to start to manage the business of this chamber for you if you cannot. If you cannot organise yourselves well enough, then we will have to step in and do it. It is a disgrace. I will not be supporting it. It looks like we are going to have to order the business before this chamber to make sure we do get through the program in the time that we have. And we can do it. It needs a bit of common sense.

Question put:

That the motion (Senator Ludwig’s) be agreed to.