Senator SCHACHT(9.28 p.m.) —Mr Acting Deputy President—

Senator Harradine —Hey, it's your amendments bringing this about.

Senator SCHACHT —That is what I wanted to speak about, Senator. I understand that the government, in the search for the guilty in that they cannot manage their own government business when time has been made available, may well point the finger about the—

Senator Campbell —We have not done so; we won't.

Senator SCHACHT —Fine. But I want to put some facts on the record about the dealings with the telecommunications bill. There has been extraordinary cooperation between all parties and the government over the process of dealing with the telecommunications bill. Going right back to when the bill was introduced, the opposition made an immediate offer to refer it straight to the legislative committee of ERCA in the Senate, on which the government has a majority, to deal with any disputes about amendments—and I outlined that in my second reading speech today—and so on.

The recommendations that came through from the Senate committee were, in detail, overwhelmingly supported by all sides on that committee. There are a number of areas where there are amendments where we and the Democrats would oppose the government's position. But one should point out that the government—and I do not blame it for this—only last Friday circulated 93 pages of amendments which had to be added to the telecommunications bill; and that those amendments overwhelmingly were in response to the unanimous recommendations of the Senate committee, most of which, I have to say on behalf of the opposition, we will vote for.

We did not get hold of those amendments until late Friday night. Over the weekend it is difficult to examine their drafting if they make changes to any of your own amendments. Certainly the Democrats had long indicated that they had many more amendments than the opposition to put forward on a range of issues. They have said, `We can't draft our amendments until we see the government's amendments,' which they were dealing with today. What happened tonight is that, as they were trying do that, a 400- or 500-page bill came in here to be debated without a decent running sheet detailing all the amendments—and that just should not be done.

I do not blame the Democrats and I do not blame the government; it was just the logistics of what has come up. I am a little surprised that when it was accepted that the telecommunications package be adjourned until tomorrow the government was not able to find some other government measure to come back—

Senator Campbell —Because no-one was expecting it to fall over.

Senator SCHACHT —Even so, in view of the range of bills that are on the list for this last two weeks, I would have thought one of them somewhere, even if it was non-controversial, could have been brought in here—

Senator Campbell —The manager thought that too.

Senator SCHACHT —Well, I just find it difficult to believe that there were not some available. Now we find that we use this time on this issue of euthanasia in the Northern Territory. I am told that apparently this procedural issue might be a conscience vote. I do not know whether that is true or not.

Senator Carr —It is true. We are all at sea now.

Senator SCHACHT —So we are all at sea now. My own view is that if the time has been set aside from tomorrow to start the euthanasia bill that is when it should start. It is just unfortunate that there is no other government business to be debated tonight. But I do not think the problem can be corrected by bringing on the euthanasia bill when everyone had agreed that there were set times for that to be dealt with starting tomorrow. Even though there are many speakers I think it is only reasonable that that start tomorrow when people expected it to.

Question put:

That the motion (Senator Abetz's ) be agreed to.