Mr SHORTEN (Maribyrnong—Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation and Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) (14:34): Goodness me, I love a lecture from this pack of hypocrites opposite— The SPEAKER: Order! The minister will return to the question! Mr SHORTEN: The reason why the question is such a hypocritical question is that, unfortunately, there is always a record of what goes before you. And what I have here— Mr Pyne: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Firstly, he should withdraw the phrase that he used, which is unparliamentary. Secondly, at least four or five of my colleagues have been thrown out today without a warning. You have warned the minister and he should be ejected from the House. The SPEAKER: The Manager of Opposition Business will resume his seat. They were abuses of points of order and not adhering to standing order 65(b). The minister is answering a question; I will ask him to refer to the question before the chair. I am just going to explain: the word used can be considered or not considered unparliamentary, but I will ask the minister to withdraw. Mr SHORTEN: I am happy to withdraw. What I should have said is that it is a trifle inconsistent on a professional basis from those opposite when they say, 'Well, the member for Maribyrnong contacted Telstra a number of times and insisted on finding out what was going on, and Telstra said they had it under control'. When he has become the minister—when I have become the minister—we have acted on the review, which was initiated by my predecessors. And we are the first government ever to act; we are the first government to put in an asbestos agency. We have moved very quickly when we were notified of the problems—and our Comcare regulator has been there in the last six to eight weeks as complaints have come in. But on this startling idea for those opposite, who have never paid attention to asbestos generally—although there are a few notable exceptions opposite, I should be fair—in 2006 Mr McGauran, the then member for Gippsland, responded to the late member for Calare, Mr Andren, when he was asked a number of questions about asbestos, and the then government, the coalition government of short memory, went through it and said, 'Yes, the Telstra network'—this is at point 2 in the Hansard, which the opposition did not bother getting out because they like to pretend that this discovery about Telstra is new— Mrs Bronwyn Bishop: Madam Speaker, I raise a point of order. The Practice makes it quite clear. Perhaps under the old standing orders tangential information may have been in order but this has to be directly relevant to the question, and all the bluster in the world and all the shouting do not make it relevant. The SPEAKER: The member for Mackellar will resume her seat. She may have observed my adherence to abuses of points of order. The minister has the call. Mr SHORTEN: The number of interjections opposite do not change one truth. In 2006 a coalition minister wrote to Mr Andren: The Telstra network still contains pits … containing— (Time expired)