Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

had promised he would deliver under his leadership. We saw the absolute contrary: we saw a childish government, in so much as there was certainly no authority in the government. Then we saw the name-calling—which has been reported in the media—by coalition ministers, senators and representatives, based on the fact that they could not get their way and therefore could not manage the standard of parliamentary business that was expected of them; they resorted to the tactic of calling those new senators names. If that was anything like adult, then I do not know what adult is—because that was certainly schoolyard behaviour to me. That was childish behaviour in the first degree.

What we also saw last week, throughout all of these chaotic shenanigans that were going on on the government benches, was a government that actually did not care about the policy at hand. That started early on in the week. That started when, on Monday, the government tried to force through the Senate the debate on the repeal bills immediately, even though it was clear the government knew that the Senate committee report into those bills was not due for another week. After breaching those rules and failing in its first attempt, the government eventually persuaded enough crossbenchers to suspend standing orders and bring on debate immediately. Labor senators spent the week advocating our policy of moving from a fixed carbon price to an emissions trading scheme that would put a cap on Australia's greenhouse gas emissions. That was the policy at hand. That was what was important to the debate. But during the second reading debate on those bills on Tuesday, Labor made it very clear that we would be moving amendments to seek to move to an emissions trading scheme—something not supported by the government.

The coalition then spent the week trying to repeal carbon pricing, to leave Australia with no serious policy to tackle climate change. I asked Senator Abetz today, in relation to the price pass-through mechanism, questions about consultation. He clearly did not give any answer as to whether the government's price pass-through mechanisms have actually been consulted on at large. Instead, he tried to play politics with that answer.

I then further tried to ask whether the proposed pass-through laws would only apply to electricity and energy suppliers and not to grocery and other major retailers. Again, there was an unclear answer—if it was any answer at all—from Senator Abetz. I know that in the other place today, similarly, there was a lack of an answer from the member for Sydney when the question was asked of the Prime Minister; he failed to guarantee that grocery prices would fall.

There has been a complete disregard today for providing answers, to the Senate and to the Australian community, about what the government is going to put on the table when it comes to the amended repeal bills that will be presented to this place this week. Instead, we could almost expect to end up with another chaotic shambles like we had last week. That is something that is still on the table. We all know where that ended up last week: with Thursday's farce, when we saw a humiliating defeat for the Prime Minister as the government's bullying turned into a debacle when the government finally secured its deal with the crossbenchers to impose a guillotine. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.