Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Hansard source

I did not interrupt you, Senator Faulkner. We will support this, but I will again place on the record that I hope the minister has not put members of this chamber, on both sides, in a different position to those in the other place. Quite frankly, from the view of the requirement of the democracy that we are privileged to have to correspond with our very large constituencies, we do not want to see that diminished by a reduction in the rights of senators to communicate with their electors. We will support this, but we will not hear any politicking in relation to the matter because, as I said before, we were the first ones to put in the cap. We genuinely believed when we brought in the increase in 2005-06 that it was to address the needs of particularly those lower house members who had significantly increased constituencies.

Question agreed to.