Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It is great to have the Attorney-General in the chamber here today. I wonder whether the Attorney-General might rise to the occasion, as it were, and provide us with some information as to why he will not back up on the public record, neither here in this chamber nor even at an estimates committee last week, how he is able to accuse Mr Edward Snowden the whistleblower of being a traitor when he has been neither charged nor convicted of any crime in the United States, when senior US administration figures have been careful not to use that phrase and when he cannot prove or show any evidence whatsoever that Australians have been put in harm's way? Similar claims were put about publisher Julian Assange when the WikiLeaks documents were first put into the public domain. And unless Senator Brandis is about to prove me wrong, we are about to see debate in here closed down.

All I was asking for was evidence to substantiate the claim which Senator Brandis was not able to substantiate in estimates last week. I do not think it is too much to expect that if you make these extraordinary claims that you back them up. (Time expired)