Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As part of the debate, Senator Siewert indicated this was a report of a Senate committee that has received wide acclaim. My point is that reports of Senate committees, even this one, will not achieve any sort of acclaim if they are seen to be the work of a chamber of the parliament that for political reasons rams through the sort of Palmer United Party inquiry into the Queensland government and appoints one government member to it. Similarly, the reference for Friday will go ahead without government representation. Once you start doing that, this very good report, which the government has responded to today, will suffer the fate of everything that comes out of the Senate, if the Labor party and the Greens continue to abuse the processes of the Senate committee system. I get very angry about this. It happened in that Queensland committee, which was an absolute and abject farce; it was a committee that was set up by the Labor Party and the Greens in support of a ridiculous motion by the then Palmer United Party—I do not think the party exists any more.