Mr ALBANESE (Leader of the House) (2:14 PM) —I rise to close this debate on whether we can have a debate or not. I do so because of the actions of those opposite, who at 10 o’clock this morning, after four days to prepare any amendments or changes that they wanted to make to the legislation, were supposed to come in here and advance their arguments in favour of them. Normally what happens with legislation is that it returns from the Senate and is dealt with immediately. This is, in fact, a very long period of time for amendments to be able to be considered by the opposition. Yet, in spite of that, not only did they not have their amendments ready here this morning; they filibustered and had a debate over whether indeed we would even consider legislation and the amendments from the Senate, which is what is before the House today.

We believe that this resolution should be carried and that the legislation should be considered. We believe that 12 years of delay, prevarication and the contradictory plans which the coalition had in government is delay enough when it comes to dealing with high-speed broadband for Australia. Indeed, the Competitive Carriers’ Coalition put out a press release today calling on the House of Representatives to support the NBN bill. The Competitive Carriers’ Coalition today announced that amendments to the NBN bills now address the issues of concern that it had raised, principally being the need to remove all access pricing discrimination opportunities, be they volume or efficiency based. According to a CCC spokesperson:

The fact is that those opposite have attempted every strategy there is to stop the nation-building infrastructure that the NBN represents going forward in an extraordinary fashion.

What they are trying to do here today as well is have some amendments carried so that then the Senate will have to be recalled, and then we, the House of Representatives, will have to be recalled to consider those decisions. They are determined to delay at any point. What they have not been prepared to do is debate the substance of the amendments that have been moved to the legislation in the Senate. We have now been sitting for more than four hours—

Honourable members interjecting—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr KJ Thomson)—Order! Members will stop interjecting. The Leader of the House has the call.

Mr ALBANESE —without dealing with any of the substantial issues before the parliament today. Indeed, we had a motion for a suspension of standing orders this morning that was not even in order. That says it all about those opposite and their failure to deal with substance and their reliance upon opposition and rejection.

I assume that the opposition will not be dividing on this motion, given the rhetoric of the Manager of Opposition Business.

Mr Pyne interjecting—

Mr ALBANESE —He says that they are dividing on it, even though they say they want to get on with the debate. The contradiction is extraordinary. They want to keep going. My motion should be carried by this House and then we should debate the substance before the House, which is the legislation that has been amended by the Senate. It is important legislation. It should be carried. I commend the resolution to the House.

Question put: