Senator RUSTON (South Australia—Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (11:27): The opposition will be supporting this suspension, because it is our view that the government has had every opportunity to negotiate with the Greens or anybody else in this place so that your bill will actually reflect the will of this chamber, but you haven't. You haven't even tried. Senator Farrell, in your contribution, you said that, if this bill went through, you could start providing this crisis accommodation, veterans accommodation and Indigenous accommodation tomorrow. Well, you could too if you actually negotiated your bill so that it could get through this place. Instead, you are absolutely hell-bent on coming in here and continuing to put up a $10 billion future fund with not one guarantee of a cent of this money ever ending up in the housing market. Basically, what you're doing is putting forward a bill that is saying that $10 billion is going to be gambled on the stock market—or to that effect. If you were really deadly serious, you could spend this money today. You don't need to put this legislation through in order to put money into the social housing, affordable housing and support housing that you come in here and talk about. You could have just put it into your budget. That would have been a pretty simple way to do it. But what we are seeing is a government that is losing control. You may have said, Senator Farrell, that the Greens are losing control. I would actually contend that it is you who are losing control, which will be demonstrated by the fact that you can't even control your legislative agenda today because you haven't done your homework. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator O'Neill ): Senator Ruston, I remind you to make your comments through the chair. Senator RUSTON: Of course. What we're seeing today is another demonstration of a government that hasn't done its homework on its legislation but is coming in here. This is a pattern of behaviour that we are continuing to see. We have seen it through many other pieces of legislation. It's all a great big headline. 'We're going to spend $10 billion on social and affordable housing.' It sounds great, but you are not spending $10 billion on social and affordable housing. You are investing $10 billion on the stock market, in the hope that it will provide you with a sufficient return to enable you to put some investment into this area. It was the same as your legislation; you were going to come here and put— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Ruston, just— Senator RUSTON: care back into aged care, Madam Chair. But no: it was a great headline, but there was no reality in terms of how you were going to deliver it. Another one was pharmacy and 60-day dispensing. It sounds like a great idea—cheaper and easier access to medicines—but you forgot to actually do your homework and consult. What we have here is a classic example of the implications and the result of legislation that has not been consulted on and legislation which has had no consideration of secondary effects. It's legislation, in this instance, that has completely disregarded normal, reasonable budget practices. And guess what has happened? You've lost control of it, because there are those in this place—and I thank the Greens for their sensible consideration of this—that actually take those three things very, very seriously. You must consult, you must understand secondary consequences and you should follow normal budget processes. Stuffing something off the balance sheet just to give yourself a budget surplus is completely irresponsible, and that's why we will be supporting this suspension motion today. We saw on the weekend that instead of coming and actually negotiating so that you could come up with something that was palatable to this place to enable it to go through and to enable that money to flow in whatever mechanism you were able to negotiate, we saw the Prime Minister just throwing a couple of billion dollars out there. Once again, this is a classic example of where you haven't done your homework and don't have a process in place. It hasn't been a considered reform and it hasn't been a consulted reform. Maybe you'd find that things go through this place a little bit better if you actually do your homework, do your preparation and make sure that everything is in place before you come in here and demand that the representatives of the Australian Senate vote for something. If you're only going to throw headlines out with your legislation; if you aren't going to put the detail in there or provide advice in terms of subordinate legislation; if you aren't going to follow appropriate and proper processes; and if you aren't going to bring the Senate along with you then you'll continue to see that the sensible people in this place will actually hold you to account and make you go through the necessary processes so that we can end up with a situation where the will of this Senate, which reflects the will of the Australian people, is delivered in your legislation. Stop being lazy and actually do your job.