Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) | Hansard source

Records are tumbling on the number of guillotines—Robespierre's guillotine would've needed sharpening by now—and the number of bills in the guillotine, except for, as Senator Lambie pointed out, Kevin Rudd's fiasco. There's the deceit with which this has been done. Records on costs of living, high; standards of living, down; and energy prices, high. There is record immigration, and increasing housing prices and rental prices. Confusion, deceit—what a mess.

This crisis that the government now portrays has been manufactured. When they first proposed the sitting schedule, we told them: 'It's not enough. Add some more.' They said, 'No, no, we'll be fine.' Labor ignored us, and we said, 'Don't come to us.' Now they're coming to us. The government hasn't come to the Senate on this issue. Plus, the government has been bill hopping—starting one day with one bill, not finishing it, and then starting the next day with another bill. This has been a manufactured crisis, a deliberate crisis, to purposely run down the clock so that they could come up with this guillotine yet again, all to hide poor legislation—to whistle through as many as you can without any scrutiny. This is to avoid scrutiny.

This is a disgrace for the people of Australia. We are supposed to represent the people of Australia. How can we represent them without doing proper scrutiny of the bills? We can't. It's been deliberate. They've been purposely running down the clock. And it's devious. It is to hide their incompetence. So we say: ditch your motion, Senator Gallagher.