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Alice and the Iron Lady in Senateland

On Wednesday morning, as the Senate argued over repealing the carbon tax, Janet Rice rose to her feet.

The new Greens senator started with: “I’ve been here for three days and I feel like Alice in Wonderland.”

As well she might.

Some of the argument was over the government’s attempt to speed up the debate, a move Labor leader Penny Wong seemed to think would be the end of the Senate as we know it.

Yet after – by the slimmest possible margin – frustrating the government and prolonging the debate, Labor and the Greens largely deserted the chamber.

They straggled back only after a quorum call, which is available when there’s fewer than 19 senators in attendance.

QANTAS NICK XENOPHON PRESSER

Senator Nick Xenophon.

Then Nick Xenophon, who hates gags and guillotines even more than the carbon tax and had therefore voted against the government, didn’t turn up at the allotted time for his speech.

Thanks partly to a little courtesy from Eric Abetz, he was given some extra time to get into the chamber.

So much for all the passion over more debating time.

Question time followed, which gave Mathias Cormann the chance to present himself as a sort of political love child of Margaret Thatcher.

Cormann, who was a nine-year-old Belgian when Thatcher came to power in Britain in 1979, was asked by a fellow Liberal about the budget.

The finance minister soon moved on to Thatcher and some of her little sayings, such as “an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work”.

He ran out of time before he’d finished, but a second supplementary question gave him the chance to reveal what he said was the Iron Lady’s favourite: “Pennies don’t fall from heaven.”

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