Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you for that clarification. At the outset let me say this opposition has been one of the most cooperative oppositions in the history of this Senate. We have helped and assisted this government. The government claims that only 40 per cent of the Senate’s time has been taken with government legislation, but that is because of one simple reason: they had no legislation to put before us. They introduced the Afghanistan motion, they introduced all sorts and manner of things, and were more than happy for private members to be given time to discuss and ventilate issues because they did not have, and still do not have, a genuine agenda to prosecute in this chamber—until now.

We had an unseemly performance last night on national TV from the Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, fresh from his debacle about the NBN not being mentioned in the legislation that is before us, being wrong about that not once, not twice, but 62 times. He then went on national TV last night to tell us that there are some ‘arcane practices’ in the Senate which are delaying process of his legislation. You know what the arcane practices are: that there are still some senators gutsy enough crease the back of the legislation, to crease the spine of the explanatory memorandum and actually read them. If the minister had done that he would not have made that monumental error that Senator Joyce so ably exposed on national TV. Also, the assertion was made that this legislation has been on the Notice Paper since June 2009—in fact, 15 June 2009. That is just completely and utterly incorrect and it goes to show the misinformation that Labor continually peddles and that is unfortunately regurgitated by friendly elements in the media.

The simple fact is the government did not do a deal with Telstra in relation to these matters until 20 June this year and then they only presented the new legislation—significantly different from that which was tabled on 15 September 2009—when they tabled it on 20 October. We have only had five days when it has actually been on the Notice Paper. This is a piece of legislation which will be the first step in implementing a $43-thousand-million infrastructure project—