Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Deputy President. The reason for urgency here, from the government's point of view—I am going to name this as well. Firstly, it is indicative that the bill was tabled in the Senate and not in the House. Of course it was done that way because they know that, if they had tabled it in the House, they would have lost some of their members across the floor. There is no doubt about that. There were Liberal members ready to cross the floor downstairs. So what happens is that they come into this place and they table it upstairs, where they know that the substantive reforms to 18C that have been the passion of Senator Paterson, Senator Abetz and others in this place are going to go down.