Labor has moved a no-confidence motion in the Turnbull government in the upper house, urging the prime minister to call an immediate election.
Opposition Senate leader Penny Wong says it's clear with at least 13 senior ministers abandoning the government it no longer has control.
Senator Wong says the government's upper house leader can't even answer how many ministers are left and the Nationals leader can't say in whom he has confidence as prime minister.
She has called on senators to note the government can change its leader but never unite its party.
"It is very clear from question time today why we should suspend and why we should debate this motion and why we should express no confidence in this government," Senator Wong told the chamber on Thursday.
"Australia does not have a functioning government. We have a rabble, a rabble of self-interested people masquerading as the representatives of Australia."
Senator Wong said this week's Liberal insurrection, which has left Malcolm Turnbull hanging onto the leadership by a thread, had been an extraordinary spectacle.
"It has been an extraordinary spectacle of disunity, of division, of personal hatred, of enmity and ill discipline," she said.
"The only people who matter to the Liberal Party are themselves."
Senator Wong said Mr Turnbull was prime minister in name only "and that clock is ticking".
"The Australian people deserve a government focused on their needs and not on the selfish, self-obsessed, hatred-filled games we have witnessed minute by minute over this last week," she said.
Labor is calling on the prime minister to visit the governor-general on Thursday to call a snap election.
