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

Thank you very much, President, for your ruling. As I said, the reason I believe this suspension is urgent enough to be called at this particular time of the day is that we have a government that is abusing its power. I do not understand how anybody in this chamber could think that the abuse of power by a government was not probably the most serious or egregious thing that could occur in the Parliament of Australia.

What we've got here is an ongoing demonstration of the refusal to provide information that is important to the Australian public. We saw last week that the government had refused to provide information about, for example, the incoming government brief about energy policy—the incoming government brief that said your energy policy is failing, emissions are not going down and energy bills are going up. Nothing could be more important to Australians than their ability to pay their bills—nothing could be more important to Australian businesses and the 1,000 people at Tomago who are concerned about their jobs.