BROKEN promises and filibustering are equally unattractive political traits.
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The government was slammed this week for using a chalkboard prop in Parliament and getting members kicked out, losing valuable democratic question time.
In the same week, Labor and the Greens deliberately stalled the passage of the government's wage freeze legislation.
Both sides are guilty of wasting Parliament's time.
Labor and Greens members kept talking long into the night on Thursday, and forced the government to break its promise of not guillotining the debate.
While Opposition Leader Bryan Green denied earlier in the week that Labor would filibuster, that's exactly what they did.
Filibustering is a common tactic in the US which aims to delay or frustrate the passage of legislation.
US Senator Ted Cruz made headlines last year when he spoke for 21 hours atop Capitol Hill.
With no rules for sticking to topic, he read from Dr Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham.
Labor may as well have done that this week, with one member reciting Shakespeare, and another offering up her life story.
Instead of going through the bill clause by clause, the opposition parties hijack the legislation and only got to the title of the bill after about 14 hours.
As costly staff overtime ticked over, it appeared Labor was sleeping in shifts in the opposition offices to delay the bill as long as they could.
The Museum of Australian Democracy records that the last official filibuster in Federal Parliament was in 1918 on the Commonwealth Electoral Act.
A speaker drilled on for 13 hours, which saw the rules change to cut speeches off at 20 minutes.
In 2008, two South Australian upper house MPs spoke for a record 13 hours straight in an attempt to filibuster workers' compensation laws.
While Tasmania's lower house has speaking time limits, Labor got creative with ways to stall.
After second reading speeches wrapped up on Thursday afternoon, Denison Labor MHA Scott Bacon moved an amendment to throw the bill out, and it allowed all members to speak again for 30 minutes each.
At about 11pm, Lyons Labor MHA David Llewellyn suggested that the bill be renamed the Industrial Relations Amendment Bill.
The title of legislation carries no legal weight, and a frustrated Treasurer Peter Gutwein started to lose his cool, and spat: "It could be called the David Act for all it mattered, you know that!"
When Bass Greens MHA Kim Booth attempted to move a no-confidence motion, the government was at the end of its tether.
The Premier promised they wouldn't cut the debate short, but those in government HQ knew they could now get away with breaking that promise.
It was no longer a debate, it was filibustering.
If Labor stayed on trajectory, the bill would not have been tabled in time to receive its first reading in the upper house, and would not be debated until late October.
With upper house MPs adamant they won't be treated like a rubber stamp, there's no telling how long the government will have to wait to have its pay pause legislation finally set in stone.
The Liberals have been in government for six months now, and might be getting nervous about their legislative agenda.
The upper house hasn't passed the budget yet, and there's $178 million of appropriation relying on the wage freeze bill passing.
But if Labor - the workers' party - didn't fight them all the way on this bill and make the government work hard for it, what would they fight for?
The party lost the faith of unions in its last term of government, and really needed to prove to the unions that they were here and ready to work for them.
But it shouldn't come at the price of wasting Parliament's time.