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

The government has this morning spent an hour and a half dealing with procedural motions only. There are substantive bills on the Notice Paper that I would encourage senators to turn their minds to so that we can deal with the legislative agenda in the Senate rather than continue to have this confected opposition debate on the carbon price legislation. All the government is asking the opposition to agree with today is that the bills be introduced into the Senate so that they can be dealt with as a message today and we can then have them available for debate in the next two weeks. The opposition now have taken the view that they are going to flop to the floor like the Liberal dead body and say: 'We're not going to do anything. We're going to just throw out the anchor and try to drag everything down. We will not engage in the debate; we will simply say no.' That is characteristic of Mr Abbott in this whole debate. All Mr Abbott wants to do is say no, no, no—no policy debate, simply a no. He is completely oppositional, without any policy—simply say no. The opposition here today are doing that. They are picking up Mr Abbott's 'Just say no' policy—