Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Brandis described us as shameless, and what he has done is rocked up in here on the bill that has been on their agenda for years. It was the double disillusion trigger. All of a sudden, they come in and say, 'Bang, we want to get this voted on tonight because we've got the numbers.' It is pretty clear what has happened. The government believe they have got the numbers. They want to get this through tonight, so they are coming in here, without notice, to move a motion to require that the Senate sit until this bill is dealt with.

You would have thought that, given how long this matter has been on the agenda, the government might have been able to get themselves into order to actually work out how it is that they are going to resolve the debate on this bill and how they are going to manage it. But, no, yet again what we have is disarray—the same sort of disarray we saw in the vote before. I do not know if others noticed, but the Nationals voted against the government. The Turnbull government split on the floor of the Senate. The Nationals voted with Senator Leyonhjelm.

Where were the Nationals ministers? Where were the Nationals cabinet ministers? Were they here? I have to say—