Senator RYAN (Victoria—Minister for Vocational Education and Skills) (17:00): I have long desired the confected outrage of Senator Wong in this place. She walked into the chamber before because one of her shadow ministers had moved a procedural motion in the Senate that facilitated a debate; and the Senate partook in that debate, as is allowed under the standing orders. The contempt of the Labor Party for the Senate is shown in the utter hypocrisy of what we have heard so far this afternoon. Only a few weeks ago we sat here all night to deal with a piece of legislation on which the Labor Party had decided to filibuster. We have all sat here when the Labor Party, sometimes joined by their colleagues in the Greens, have prevented the Senate from dealing with important legislation—through the techniques of deferral, referral to committee, repeatedly referring similar bills to committees and at no point allowing or facilitating the Senate to debate them. We sat here when the Labor-Greens government had a majority in the Senate. At one point, more than 30 bills were subject to a guillotine. Bills that had never had a word uttered on them, and amendments that had never been debated or even presented in this chamber, were guillotined on a Thursday afternoon in order to meet the secret deals that had been done by Labor and the Greens—and, with all those internal trade-offs, who knows who was to benefit from that? As we have seen this week, the interests of the Labor Party cannot be in any way separated from the interests of the trade union movement. Not only did they legislate to put a union at the centre of a tribunal that is dedicated to nothing less than explicitly putting small business out of operation and explicitly putting the homes and livelihoods of struggling Australian small businesses at risk; they then used the taxpayer to write a $200,000 cheque to support the operation and the publicity of that particular tribunal. That same body—a body that the Labor government handed money over to—then wrote cheques to the Labor Party to support their election campaign. In the corporate world, those related party transactions are subject to some sort of disclosure; they are subject to protections in the interests of shareholders. But, in the view of the Labor Party, the public till is something to be raided for your members, who then write cheques for you with fungible money to support your re-election. Yesterday we had the deputy leader of the Labor Party insulting the Governor-General—a decent man by anyone's measure—in this place and thereby degrading this chamber. I have not seen many of those opposite stand up and say that that was simply inappropriate for someone who holds an important office. Senator Wong: I would not have used those words. Senator RYAN: Senator Wong, I will take that interjection. I am not sure if it means you would still insult him! But I do not think what he did yesterday—with a basic knowledge of constitutional history in this country, which Senator Conroy clearly lacks— Senator Wong: Why are you talking about yesterday? Senator RYAN: Senator Wong, I am going to the point that you raised in your address only a few minutes ago—that the parliament was prorogued and summoned to deal with pieces of legislation the government said were a priority. After years of refusing to allow the parliament to consider the legislation, earlier this year you sent it off to a committee with the specific intention of preventing it being dealt with before the budget—and then you cry wolf because you do not like the process the Constitution allows to summon the parliament. And then you admitted in your speech earlier that that was all a delay—because you rolled over and had a vote on it last night. We then dealt with the second piece of legislation, the bill to abolish the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal, because we had hundreds of truckies and their families driving to this building and saying that this legislation, put in place by Labor and the Greens for their TWU mates—your funders, the people who write you cheques—would cost them their jobs. Opposition senators interjecting— Senator RYAN: At least the Labor Party is being honest now—it actually wants to shut down small business. The confected outrage of Senator Wong and the Labor Party has no place in this chamber, and the Australian public do not take it seriously. I just wish I could act half as well!