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A LIFE-SIZED cardboard Kevin Rudd sent Parliament into an angry meltdown yesterday as the Federal Government and Opposition traded recriminations over standards of behaviour.
Opposition MPs brought the cut-out into the House of Representatives to highlight the absence of the Prime Minister, who was visiting Walgett and will not always attend Parliament on Fridays.
Pandemonium broke out as the Opposition flouted instructions from the Deputy Speaker, Anna Burke, to remove the prop and defied an attempt by Ms Burke to "sin bin" one of its MPs.
After several minutes of uproar - including an Opposition MP audibly swearing at Ms Burke - she declared that the chair's position had become untenable and suspended the sitting.
The furore brought to a head tensions over the Government's decision to have Parliament sit on Fridays to give backbenchers time to raise issues.
The Opposition says Mr Rudd and his ministers should attend the Friday sittings and answer questions. It branded the Friday sittings a parliamentary RDO: Rudd's Day Off.
The manager of Opposition business, Joe Hockey, said: "We don't want to have cardboard Kevin here, we want to have the real Kevin here."
But the Government leader of the house, Anthony Albanese, said the Coalition was taking out its frustration at losing last year's election on Parliament.
"We now have an Opposition that doesn't know where it stands … and that has got no positive agenda so has been reduced to a rabble attacking the good order in the Parliament," he said.
Mr Albanese denied that the Government was less accountable. There would still be four days a week on which there were questions to ministers, as under the Howard government, and there would be more ministerial statements.
The first Friday sitting got off to a bad start when the Queensland Liberal MP Steven Ciobo moved a motion to convene a question time.
The Government immediately moved to gag Mr Ciobo. But when Opposition MPs called for a division - where all MPs come into the chamber to vote on a motion - the Speaker deferred it until the next sitting day.
This is the procedure the Government has adopted for Friday sittings. It is designed to ensure the Government can have MPs absent without risking losing a vote.
Rowdy scenes followed as Coalition MPs protested and Mr Ciobo defied an order from the Speaker, Harry Jenkins, to leave the chamber.
Mr Jenkins eventually called on the sergeant-at-arms to escort Mr Ciobo out of the House.
Hostilities broke out again later when the West Australian Liberal MP Don Randall brought in the cardboard likeness of Mr Rudd.
The figure was propped up at the dispatch box near the Opposition Leader, Brendan Nelson. Mr Randall took it out after repeated warnings from the Victorian Labor MP Ms Burke, who was in the chair as Deputy Speaker.
But after the National Party frontbencher Luke Hartsuyker refused to comply with an order to leave the chamber, Ms Burke suspended the sitting.
It eventually resumed briefly with Mr Jenkins in the chair.
Mr Hockey said the Opposition would keep pressing on Fridays for Mr Rudd to attend Parliament.
自由党彻底的失败了。。。
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