Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to take note of Senator Cash's statement to this chamber this morning. We had, yet again, an occurrence of Senator Cash using either the chamber of the Senate or its committees to refuse to answer legitimate questions about her behaviour and the behaviour of her ministerial colleagues. This time around, it's in relation to an order to produce documents that was passed by the Senate last week.

I acknowledge that it was on the motion of crossbench senators, Senators Griff, Hanson and Hinch. It's actually the first time that I have noticed that Senator Hanson was one of the co-signatories to this motion, so I'm a little surprised that she is one of the people running interference to protect her Liberal mate Senator Cash this morning. I would have thought that, if Senator Hanson were so interested to get these documents—which I'll go into in a moment—she would actually want to see it through and would want to put some pressure on the government to produce the documents that she sought. But of course that would involve going against her Liberal mates, and in particular her best mate, Senator Cash, so she has backed down on her own request to produce documents.

I suppose that we're not really that surprised to see Senator Hanson backing down when it comes to taking on the Liberals. It's always a lot easier for her to just vote with them, as she does—it's got to be more than 85 per cent of the time. Are you keeping a running total, Senator Hanson? It's got to be getting towards 90 per cent now.