Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Mr President, in speaking to the motion briefly, can I indicate the coalition’s full support for your ruling and your determination. It is based on sound reasoning. The decision is based on precedent. As you quite rightly pointed out, the statements that are complained of are in fact not inconsistent; they may be different. But it is a very long bow to draw indeed—as is the wont of the Australian Greens of course—to suggest that there has been a contempt of the Senate. I would have thought that any reading of the documentation provided by the Australian Conservation Foundation to the ACCC would have disclosed that. That it was brought before you for a ruling or a determination as to whether this was a matter that was deserving of precedence was in fact nothing but a stunt by the Australian Greens. They must have known that from the outset. Clearly, there were no contradictory statements.

Furthermore, there may have been some skerrick of support for the assertion made by the Greens if the submissions, written and oral, had been provided in camera to the Senate. But the submissions were made publicly. As I understand it, they were put up on the Senate committee’s website. The witnesses spoke to the committee in public. A huge degree of reporting was undertaken on the various companies’ submissions et cetera to the inquiry into the CPRS. So there was no suggestion that any of this was done in secret or in an underhand manner. Indeed, everything was quite consistent. There are different requirements in relation to company reporting. If there is a difficulty with company reporting then that is a matter the Greens or the Australian Conservation Foundation, or the two of them in lock step, ought to refer to ASIC or some other organisation. They should not use the forms of the Senate. So, Mr President, the coalition, on whose behalf I speak in relation to this, fully support your determination in this matter.

This has just been an exercise in convoluted self-justification by the Greens. They are trying to justify their stunt. I note with some interest Senator Milne’s concern that certain statements not be exaggerated. She said that things were exaggerated. Those of us who had the opportunity of reading the weekend media would have seen Laurie Oakes’s expose of the Australian Greens quite mischievous exaggeration of an unfortunate oil spill. The Australian Greens senators described an oil slick which later became algae. What was alleged to be 20 kilometres from the coast is now 198 kilometres from the coast. That is an exaggeration of about a factor of 10.

The Australian Greens should come to this debate with clean hands. They said: ‘We never exaggerate. We never do things of that nature.’ Of course, the Australian Greens are well known for their stunts, albeit I do note that Senator Siewert quite properly did admit that what she thought was oil could be algae. Our friends in the media never report those things on the Australian Greens, do they? That is a very interesting observation. Whereas, if somebody like me gets into a spot of bother, I apologise and withdraw—I do all of those things—and the media run with it for ages. That is fine; that is part of the game. But there does seem to be a separate rule for the Australian Greens. They would have to be the most protected species in Australia.

I find it interesting that the media does that for the Australian Greens when they are caught out time and time again with their gross exaggerations. They came into this place and said, ‘A company may have exaggerated or slightly nuanced something,’ when in fact the evidence does not support that. I find that interesting, to use a neutral term. In brief, the opposition fully support the statement you have just made, Mr President. I commend you for it.