George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I will come to your question in a moment, Senator O'Neill, but I wonder why it is that you would preface your question with the words 'Senator Bernardi, who is currently on a taxpayer funded trip to the United Nations' while omitting to mention that your colleague Senator Lisa Singh is on the same taxpayer funded visit to the United Nations which has been a convention of this parliament for many, many years. The innuendo against Senator Bernardi seems to be both unfair and borderline dishonest.

There is no doubt that there will be an enormous amount of commentary on what everybody acknowledges to have been a very, very historic election, an election that was unexpected by most. Senator Bernardi is perfectly entitled to make comments. The comment that has been attributed to him has been made by many others.