Senator SIEWERT (Western Australia—Australian Greens Whip) (15:22): Thank you, Mr President. I am glad that you made sure you exercised your authority over the chamber. Senator Ian Macdonald: On a point of order, Mr President, your practice is to go from one side of the chamber to the other. The Greens and the Labor Party are one and the same, as we all know. Senator Conroy: On the point of order, Senator Macdonald is just the grumpy old man of the Senate. You correctly called Senator Siewert and you should tell him to sit down and stop taking spurious points of order. The PRESIDENT: Senator Conroy! You will withdraw that remark. That is an adverse reflection on the senator. Senator Conroy: My goodness! I withdraw unreservedly. The PRESIDENT: Thank you. And I do not need any assistance on the point of order. Senator Siewert was clearly the only senator on her feet at that time—and for quite some time. Senator Siewert has the call. Senator SIEWERT: Thank you, Mr President. The Greens, it will come as no surprise, will not be supporting this motion to suspend standing orders. The government have failed to manage this place over the last period of sitting, to the extent where they were stacking their own bills. So, when they did not have the numbers, they started putting people on the speaking list. Because of their failed management of the chamber, they expect us to sit here late. We could go through a list of the times that the government have, in fact, used up the time of this Senate because they were not managing it properly. I will note just a few of them. For a start, there was the time when Senator Brandis refused to do his job as the Attorney-General and answer questions during committee-stage debate on the counter-terrorism bill. Senator Wright and Senator Ludlam were asking totally legitimate and very necessary questions over a critical piece of legislation in this place, and what did Senator Brandis do? He sat there and sat there. In fact, the video of that particularly poor performance is rather popular on the internet at the moment. Last time I looked, there had been 40-odd thousand views of that clip—and it is probably more by now. It was a classic example of where the government were refusing to answer questions on their own legislation. So they wasted valuable hours of government debating time, and here they are with their key law person of the country refusing— The PRESIDENT: Pause the clock. Senator Conroy on a point of order? Senator Conroy: I am not sure, but I think I might have misheard Senator Siewert. If I could just ask her to clarify, she may have used an unparliamentary term. Could she just clarify what she was describing Senator Brandis as? Otherwise, I think you should ask her to withdraw, because I think it was unparliamentary. The PRESIDENT: Order, Senator Conroy! If that was the case, I would certainly not be asking her to repeat it. Senator Conroy interjecting — The PRESIDENT: Order! Senator Conroy! If Senator Siewert did say something unparliamentary, I expect that she will withdraw it. But, Senator Siewert, it is at your discretion. You have the call. Senator SIEWERT: I sincerely withdraw the comment I made about Senator Brandis, the Attorney-General, being the senior law person of this country. Then, finally, someone obviously spoke to him and said, 'You'd better get things moving and actually do your job and start answering the questions.' So he begrudgingly started answering the odd question now and again. That cost this chamber hours, because he was refusing to do his job. Then, of course, we lost more time when we, rightly, censured the Minister for Defence for saying that ASC could not build a canoe, which was a totally ridiculous comment to make. What did the government expect—that we would just suck it up when such accusations were being chucked around? Then, of course, on FoFA, they deliberately filibustered the debate for half a day when we tried to very sensibly address a huge flaw in that legislation. That was another day lost. Now they come in here and say that we should give up more time—because they now think that maybe they have the numbers. They have been re-counting, re-counting and re-counting, putting people on their speakers' list and putting their legislation on and off the agenda. First it is top of the list; then it is down the list. Really, do not come in here and expect us, at two minutes before going-home time, to be willing to discuss hours. At the beginning of the week, we finally had a leaders and whips meeting—finally. The list of what they wanted to discuss was as long as your arm. Then some form of agreement was reached on what was going to be on the list. Then we got the hours motion with more bills stacked back on. Maybe that was because they thought they had the numbers then, whereas they did not think they had the numbers earlier in the week. Now that very important list of bills—there were seven in the previous motion—has just one bill on it. There is now only one urgent bill. This is not good management. We do not believe that we should be sitting here to debate this bill because the government think they may have the numbers. What happens a bit later when they do not have the numbers? That was obviously what happened yesterday, when you started adding people to the speaking list because you did not have the numbers at that time. Therefore, you started stacking it up, wasting Senate time when there was other work that could have been done. The non-controversial bills could have been discussed. Because you did not manage it well enough, we still have not got through all of those so-called non-controversial bills. For example, with the adoption bill—though I do not think it is non-controversial—we were willing to debate it at that point because we were trying to help manage the chamber. That is a bad piece of legislation. The other legislation is bad legislation. You know it. You have not got the numbers to deal with it. We will not be supporting the suspension.