Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) | Hansard source

Thank you very much. Guess what we've got here? We have got the government using a guillotine again. You would have thought that this government might have understood the history of this country: the history that says Australia rides on the sheep's back.

Sheep are an absolutely integral part of our economy. You would think, by listening to those on the other side, that they no longer care about the underpinning of our economy in this country. Mind you, by the actions that we've seen them take in terms of their economic policy since they were elected to government, I think most Australians would realise they really don't care. What we've seen today happens time and time again. We saw it happen last week and we've seen it happen in just about every sitting week of this parliament. This government, because it can't manage its legislative agenda, uses things that have always, in the past, been used sparingly. There are conventions that are usually adhered to, and, occasionally, when you get to the end of a sitting period, you may well use one of these tools if you need to get something through. But, no, this government actually thinks that the use of the guillotine is just standard parliamentary process. It is absolutely unbelievable.

You should at least have some fig leaf and try to manage your agenda, before you come in here and start to guillotine debate. What is most significant are the consequences of the actions that we are seeing here today in one of the most important pieces of legislation which will have wide-ranging impacts across the whole of rural, regional and remote Australia. Those effects will then knock on into our supermarkets and our household budgets. This government is going to guillotine this piece of legislation and push it through.

What is probably more insulting for the many farmers that are in the building today, who've come to say to the government, 'Please, listen to us,' is the way this was announced in the first place. It was announced during Beef Week. The minister was swanning around in Rockhampton with his brand new Akubra, accepting the hospitality of Australia's farming sector. He then, under the cloak of darkness, got on a plane and flew to Western Australia to make this announcement—not in a farming region in Western Australia but in the city. He didn't want to eyeball the very farmers whose careers and livelihoods, after generations, were going to be completely and utterly damned by the actions of this government.

We are here today, as the coalition, to condemn the actions of this government in relation to this because we believe that Australia's farmers deserve better than this. They are what underpin the economic benefits and conditions right now. If it hadn't been for our resources and farming sectors, there would be no way in the world you'd have been booking a surplus. Your windfall surplus came off the back of rural, regional and remote Australia, yet you walk in here and you condemn this place because of your actions.

So what I would say is that the government need to have a very serious think about what they're doing here because, by their very actions, they continue to undermine the practices of this chamber. We are more than happy to have a respectful and robust debate about any legislation that you want to bring in here. We often won't agree, but at least do this chamber the courtesy of allowing us to have that debate. What we are seeing here means that tonight, with the time for debate probably limited to less than two hours, we are going to be prevented from having everybody give their contribution, and I can tell you that there are a lot of Western Australian senators and a lot of coalition senators—National Party and Liberal Party senators—who would like to come here and put on the record their support for Australian farmers. They would like to do that, but tonight, because we've got to truncate this debate into the space of two hours, that will be all the time that is available for those of the 76 people in this chamber who want to make a contribution to this really important debate.

So I say to the Labor Party: if you are really serious about being a government, you also have to be really serious about the parliamentary processes that sit behind what you do. You are coming in here and completely undermining one of the most important protocols of this place, and that is the accepted running of this chamber and the right of every member of this parliament to have their say on something that they believe is important. We should stand in condemning the government; the Greens, who have supported them; and the members of the crossbench who sat on that side to put this guillotine through. You should all be condemned for your actions, because Australia's farmers and Australia's rural, regional and remote communities deserve a lot better than what you're giving them.