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

Then it is a good amendment and it ought to be acceptable to the government. We are dealing here with a guarantee for an amazing circumstance—a default on a loan. I am now testing the government to have a guarantee for an amazing circumstance—that is, that the minister, or the executive, does not recall parliament. Do you see the logical flow-on? Or is it that the interests of the banking sector are more important than the democratic interests of this country and that the same logic does not flow on for the need for the democratic watchdog of the executive, which is the parliament, to be called into action when this circumstance arises? Do we not need a guarantee here that the executive will recall parliament? In my experience, the one thing that executives do not like is parliamentary scrutiny. Governments more and more, when they have been in the saddle, like to get out of parliament as much as they can. On behalf of the Greens, I am proposing that, in the extraordinary circumstances outlined where there is a default and then in the extraordinary circumstances—which the minister thinks unlikely—that the executive did not recall parliament, it is recalled.