Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

Today we've seen 10 senators trying to ask a question, representing their state, and those over there have shut them down, every single time. They are doing the work to shut down question time for government senators in this place. We've also seen all of the 'noalition'—all of them filing in behind Senator Pocock to ensure that the conventions in this place were torn up yesterday. They were absolutely torn up yesterday. That is what happened.

We've just had a 3½ hour question time, and I don't think a blow was landed. I could be biased here, but, honestly, you had every opportunity. You were talking about transparency, talking about all the questions that we needed to answer, and we gave you 3½ hours. I think we saw the results of that. We saw what happened. They didn't have lots of questions to ask. Their first two questions were actually about themselves and whether or not they were going to be able to ask questions. It was absolutely unbelievable what we have just seen. There was 3½ hours of the opposition flailing about—the shambles that we know they are—and they were not able to land really anything on the government.

We've sat here for 3½ hours answering questions, and all you've done is shut down the ability—those great transparency warriors, those great warriors of, 'Oh, everyone has a voice.' Everyone has a voice in this chamber except for the voices that those, the 'noalition', want to silence. That's what has happened today, when we wanted to sit. We would have sat right through the night. We moved twice to sit through the night to keep question time going so that every question could be answered, and you voted it down. The Greens voted it down; Senator Pocock voted it down; the opposition voted it down. What has this all been about? There are all these questions we've got to answer!