Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I put to the Senate that, firstly, there is a club arrangement in the Senate which means that the President automatically comes from the government and the Deputy President comes from the opposition. That is not an arrangement which the Greens support. It means, effectively, that the best person is not necessarily elected to the position. That is what we should be aspiring to, short of the ideal that Senator Nettle put forward—that there should be an independent President of the Senate and, indeed, Speaker of the House of Representatives. I ask: what is it about the four good, worthy and capable Democrat senators, those on the Green benches or Family First which should exclude them from this process?