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

It is not my fault if the Attorney-General has not done his homework and read the dissenting report in my name on behalf of the Australian Greens, which was put in to the Human Rights Committee report, which made it very clear that the Greens supported the submissions of the Human Rights Commission to the Human Rights Committee which recommended a number of changes.

So for the Attorney to get up and suggest that the contribution that I have just made is in any way an argument for the entirety of the government's proposed procedural changes is entirely false. The Attorney well knows that many of the changes he is proposing in this legislation are not supported by the Human Rights Commission. The Greens' position will continue to be that we will support the reasonable amendments proposed by the government that are in line with the views of the commission, and that we intend to move our own amendments to the bill currently before the Senate to ensure that the procedural amendments made by this legislation, should it pass, are in fact in line with the wishes of the Human Rights Commission.

The Attorney has fallen flat on his face here. I know he thinks he is the smartest bloke in the room, but the simple fact of the matter is that he is not quite as smart as he thinks he is. His argument, clever though it may have sounded, has no merit whatsoever—and I note that he in no way addressed the substance of my previous contribution, which was, in effect, that neither The Australian nor Mr Leak had any genuine interest in settling the matter that was before the Human Rights Commission expeditiously and that, in fact, to the contrary, they intended to use that complaint, which was put before the Human Rights Commission by another person, as a weapon in their ongoing vendetta against the commission, against Professor Triggs and against section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.