Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations) | Hansard source

The suspension is extremely important because what it is that Senator Cash was trying to do before she got shut down was one of the most fundamental principles of our democracy, but the government wants to shut down this debate. Ministers are accountable to the parliament. They are accountable to the laws that they introduce, and they are accountable for the information that they provide. They are accountable when they deliberately deny the Senate an opportunity to scrutinise legislation. That is what the suspension is about.

Labor said that this was the biggest tax reform in 25 years, yet they have denied appropriate scrutiny by this chamber. They have treated this chamber as something of inconvenience. There were two hearing days into this inquiry, only two hearing days. It was a sham inquiry. The written report at the end of it was tabled within a week. There were two days for the biggest tax reform—'reform', I might say—the biggest tax increase in 25 years, and yet somehow this chamber was used as an inconvenience to Labor. Labor was running a sham inquiry while Australians held an alternate inquiry just outside the door, their own grassroots inquiry, and what they told us was very clear indeed. What they said was that they were angry. They were angry at this government's attack on aspiration. They were angry at the government making it harder to save, harder to invest, harder to build a business and harder to buy a home. It is a mean and tricky piece of legislation. And Australians said it very carefully and very clearly—