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

They are. Then I presume that the calls of ‘dishonesty’ opposite are the government proclaiming their election campaign slogan for next year! It is interesting to see a degree of honesty coming into the sloganeering of the government members. They are saying that they will be campaigning on a basis of dishonesty in the run-up to the next election. The government certainly have a record that would back up that campaign as being authentic, for once, when they go before the Australian people.

The Greens will continue to faithfully serve the Senate, to tackle the government whenever it puts a foot wrong, which is very frequently, and to bring in productive and progressive alternatives to the government’s program in this place. But there it is: this is the executive trammelling the Senate because it has the numbers. We will be campaigning very strongly to reverse that next year. In the meantime, we will accept the situation as it is—that the government is going to run for cover. That is what this motion is about. It should be called the Howard government’s run-for-cover motion. It does not want scrutiny, it does not want analysis and it does not want opposition, because it knows that it loses every time it comes under the blowtorch of parliamentary dissection, parliamentary pressure and parliamentary heat. The government interjected about dishonesty this afternoon; it should add to that ‘a failure to face up to opposition’ when it comes to a great house like the Senate. That is the government using its numbers; that is the Prime Minister using the numbers in here. We oppose the motion.

Question agreed to.