Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I support the Greens amendment, which seeks to expand the focus of the committee to regional and remote Indigenous communities rather than just remote Indigenous communities. I think it is important to be able to do that. The Democrats in general support the proposal of having a substantial committee inquiry into this very important issue. Given that I have spoken for a number of years now in this chamber about the need to give a much greater and concerted focus and priority to Indigenous issues across the political spectrum, it would only be reasonable for us to support the proposal to do just that. But the hypocrisy we are seeing from the coalition again has to be noted. After three years of preventing a single Senate select committee being established, we now have a fourth Senate select committee being set up in the space of a couple of weeks. As I said a few minutes ago in regard to the Selection of Bills Committee report, the hypocrisy of the coalition putting in place a comprehensive Senate committee inquiry stretching out over 2½ years—it is proposed the committee make its final report in September 2010—into an intervention that this Senate was given one day to examine is unbelievable. I know we are meant to all smile wryly and go, ‘Oh well, that’s politics,’ but I just find that too hard, frankly. The gall is beyond belief—even for politicians. That is very different from agreeing with—