Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

My Tasmanian colleagues, who are amazing orators at the best of times, want to interject on me about the importance of this debate and the need for us to actually allocate appropriate time to legislation that is on the red, TLAB bill, which, of course, is incredibly important, but it's an either/or proposition here: 'You get two minutes on this if you like and then we can move on.' We could be done by 10, we were told, which is in 11 minutes time.

No, that's not okay. We aren't just going to shut up and allow you to do what you are doing, and that is run a steamroller through this place just so we can get on with the rest of it. We have another sitting week next week too, so we could actually factor that into the timing of debate in this place. I don't think that's an unreasonable request. We didn't have to have a suspension on this. We could have probably dealt with the motion if leave had been granted. We wouldn't be having this debate now. Perhaps take some responsibility for your actions. We're trying to make the case to the Australian Greens and the crossbench so that your colleagues understand what the leadership group of the government in the Senate are doing as well. I don't think some opposite understand exactly what's going on. It is a truncation of debate, and that is a bad thing to happen in this chamber. I don't think—