Rod Kemp (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Brown shakes his head. I must say, Senator Brown, when I listen to you debate I can understand what extremism is in this country. Senator Brown and his colleagues are extremists. I will be explaining to you carefully why they are. Senator Brown came in and he postured, as he always does, waved his hands around and said: ‘Look. It’s terrible there aren’t government ministers in here. It’s terrible there aren’t Labor shadow ministers.’ I might say, ‘It’s terrible there aren’t any Greens in here,’ to be quite frank. Anyway, it is your bill and you cannot apparently roll out your own people. Then he said, ‘We want the government to debate this.’

I looked at the speakers list. The speakers list has been carefully arranged by Senator Brown and Senator Milne. Where did they put the government speakers? I will tell you where they put the government speakers—the last four speakers in this debate are government speakers. What Senator Brown wanted to do was to make sure that the government had the last say in this debate, rather hoping of course that the Greens had been able to get their own views across. Senator Brown, you have played funny games, as you often do. You have been caught out this time. So what do the government think? We get the speakers list and we see that we are all shoved down the bottom of the list except for my esteemed colleague Senator Eggleston. The Labor Party is given priority. Senator Brown, you wonder why sometimes you are not taken seriously; it is because you play these rather childish games.