Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Employment (Senator Abetz) to questions without notice asked by Senators Conroy and Singh today relating to the proposed repeal of the carbon tax.

Senator Abetz should think back to what happened for the coalition back in 2001, when the former Liberal president, Shane Stone, described the coalition as 'mean, tricky and nasty'. What I would be putting to the Palmer United Party is that nothing has changed since 2001—absolutely nothing. And if any of you are surprised that the coalition would be mean, tricky and nasty, then you have not thought about the history of this Liberal Party in this country. Shane Stone not only said in 2001 that the Liberals were mean, tricky and nasty; he also said that they were 'dysfunctional' and 'out of touch with the Liberal base'. He went on and said that they were not listening to the Liberal base and they had to be dragged screaming to fix mistakes.

I think the PUP know that that last point, about having to be dragged screaming to fix a mistake, is quite clearly their experience of last Thursday when this Senate descended into the most dysfunctional Senate that we have seen for many, many years in this place. The Prime Minister said, 'We have got situation normal.' Well, I do not know what was normal about last Thursday. When I had a look around, we had coalition negotiators running around here like chooks with their heads cut off—quite clearly running around the place not knowing what was going on, having completely lost control of the Senate. We had the coalition senators after the debate in what was described to me as a 'catatonic state'. I was not sure quite what a catatonic state was, but it is described in the dictionary as 'muscular rigidity and mental stupor'. Well, there was clearly a catatonic state amongst the coalition senators last Thursday! As to what happened, you see it time and time again here in question time: you see Senator Abetz blaming the Labor Party for all of the problems in this country. He blames everyone else. They do not blame themselves. So what did they do with the PUP? They blamed the catastrophic failure of the coalition leadership in this place to be able to negotiate their bill through the Senate on the inexperience of the new senators. So they immediately went to the blame game—they blamed the new senators.

Then we had Senator Lambie blame Senator Abetz. She said: 'The crossbench will make him pay for his silly games.' So, quite clearly, Senator Abetz was out there playing silly games. Senator Lambie also came out and said to the Prime Minister, 'You should sack Senator Abetz immediately.'