Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I want to raise some issues different from those we have heard in this debate so far. Senator Day has raised a matter of public importance about extinguishing Senate diversity. I find it interesting that Senator Day would be talking about diversity when Senator Day trots around like a faithful puppy every time the Liberals call a vote. If you want to know where Senator Day is voting, you just have to look at where the Liberals are sitting. There is no diversity. Senator Day has been turned on by his so-called mates in the Liberal Party, and he is going to get kicked out after being such a sycophantic follower of the Liberal Party for the last couple of years. His sycophancy is being repaid with his getting kicked out early because of these changes arrived at behind the scenes by the Greens, by Senator Xenophon and by the Liberal Party. There is quite a strong case of hypocrisy with Senator Day. How must he be feeling when he wakes up every day knowing that his constant voting, following the Libs around every time, has meant absolutely nothing?

Senator Rhiannon speaks about embarrassment and oblivion. I am not embarrassed to say that I do not mind a bit of diversity. I appreciate having people in here who understand the working class of this country, who have come from working class backgrounds—not like the coalition, who have never worked a hard day in their lives; they do not know what it is like to have to battle to put food on the table, do not know what it is like to have to battle to live day by day. The problem we have here goes even deeper than the stupidity of the Greens in doing this deal. If they were going to do a deal, at least the Greens could have tried to get something out of it. But they are the real mugs of this parliament—they never get anything for the deals that they do. They just roll over. They are even worse than the National Party. The Libs call them in, give them a cup of tea or a chardonnay, and they roll over—they say 'tickle my neck' and away they go. They get a tickle on the neck and that is it. They do a deal but they get nothing out of the deal. Surely if they were a progressive party they would be going after the rorts that have taken place under the donation laws in this country. They would be doing something about it. The Greens had an opportunity to do something now, and what did they do? They rolled over—they absolutely rolled over. They are the biggest mugs this parliament has ever seen in terms of carrying out negotiations. They rolled over on multinationals tax and they have now rolled over on this. A progressive party would at least have enough guts to stand up and get something out of the backroom deals they do.

This is what we really need to be dealing with: we need to be dealing with the Liberal Party in New South Wales, who are getting handed brown paper bags with $10,000 in them in the front seat of a Bentley. What does that do for democracy in this country? We hear a lot about democracy but you will not hear the Liberals or the Greens in this debate talking about the rorts that are the real problem for democracy—the big business donations. The Greens had an opportunity this time round to stand up and say to the Liberals, if you want us to make changes then we want changes to the electoral laws in this country so that you cannot hide donations, so that you cannot get donations made nationally sent to New South Wales; you cannot get donations laundered federally to come back into New South Wales. We know what happened in ICAC with the Liberal Party; we know that four of their MPs in New South Wales had to resign because of the electoral deals they were doing. Senator Sinodinos was the chairman of Australian Water Holdings at the time they gave $180,000 to a company called Eight by Five.