Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Not Senator Evans, not Senator Doug Cameron, not Senator Trish Crossin, not Senator Carol Brown, not Senator Gavin Marshall, not Senator Penny Wong, not Senator Claire Moore, not Senator Kim Carr and not Senator Louise Pratt—not one of them has gone to the doors and said: 'We disagree with this. We find this to be anathema. We absolutely will stand by our principles. We will not let this happen.' Not one of them has done that. There has been silence—the silence of the Left as they pass this over and then this ridiculous process of the Greens, who have the power to stop it, trying to fool people into thinking that somehow they have got the power this morning in the paper with a full-page ad but they do not have the power now. It has gone. It has gone into the ether. They do not have the power anymore.

Be fair dinkum. You know full well that you can stop it, because we have been there before. I will give you examples of when we have been there before. I remember when the West Papuans turned up and it was on for young and old with a bloke called John Winston Howard, the Prime Minister, and a whole coalition that supported strong borders. Another coalition senator and I said we were not going to vote for it; we were going to cross the floor because we believed that the dignified thing was that these people be let in. We got absolutely poleaxed, but they let them in. It made the difference. You can make the difference if you want to. If you really want to, if you are fair dinkum, you can make the difference. What is so absolutely and utterly disgraceful is that you do not make the difference. You will not make the difference. You do not have the ticker to make the difference.

Honourable senators interjecting—