Senator ROBERT RAY (1:08 PM) —Today we have heard from the Democrats—the ones that John West rejected, the ones who are not involved at all in the GST negotiations. The only way they can get back in the marketplace is to come into the Senate and object to this. I want to make only one point. What is stunning about this is that it is obvious—and I think it is an obvious move—that a government would withdraw its taxation measures whilst it is in the midst of negotiations. We cannot be overly critical of that.

Senator Bartlett —You just were.

Senator ROBERT RAY —You are in the ideal position with your new friends to go and negotiate what to bring on now. Where were your bozos over the last weekend? They were sitting up at Treasury Place negotiating with Mr Costello and Mr Howard. Some of you were staying in hotels around Melbourne hoping to get a tidbit thrown to you, but what were your negotiators doing? They were negotiating about tax. Surely it would have occurred to just one of them, `Well, tax is going to go off next week. What comes on?' There are 25 bills. Surely your negotiators could have suggested to the government, `We wouldn't mind the wool bill or whatever other bill coming on on Monday.'

Senator Bartlett —They said they had already stitched up a deal with you lot.

Senator ROBERT RAY —No, they had not. The first we knew about this proposal was when the Manager of Government Business faxed us the new program, and I must commend him for getting it out as quickly as he could because I think he probably sent it to us within half an hour of decision making. We were told that on Thursday.

But what has happened to the great negotiators? All you have to do at the moment, Senator Bartlett, through you, Madam President, is when you say, `Jump', the Liberals will respond, `How high?' You have got them. You are in negotiation. But what do you bozos do? You forget to arrange the program for this week. You ignore it. Talk about the arguments in the paper that the fairies at the bottom of the garden have suddenly become trolls; they are back to fairies at the bottom of the garden again. They overlooked the fact that the Senate is sitting this week. They overlooked the fact that, if they knock this motion off, they go into their favourite debate on the privatisation of Telstra. Is that what you want? That is the effect if you vote against this motion today.

On the general view, the Labor Party has rarely enforced the cut-off motion. We never believed in it particularly in government; that is true. Something like 190 cut-off motions have come before this chamber, and we have voted for about 188 of them. We do reserve the right in certain circumstances to knock it off, either on the basis of lack of consultation or, tactically, because we hate the bill. We are honest about it. One or the other reason will be what we put forward to knock off the cut-off motion, but we do not generally agree with it.

What we really dislike is the smarmy hypocrisy of the old Australian Democrats coming in and saying, `We're in negotiations with the government. We believe the tax bill should be taken off while those negotiations go on, but we were too damned dopey to think of an alternative proposition to put to the government last Thursday and Friday to sort out this week.' The one thing that we dislike in politics more than the adversarial nature is pure unprofessional dopiness. Guilty on all charges.

Question resolved in the affirmative.