Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Unfortunately, we were not advised of the content or the fact that the contribution from the Leader of the Government in the Senate was even happening, so forgive my lack of preparation. I want to put our position on the record. We too were extremely concerned about the content of notice of motion No. 612 to be moved by that regular bringer of dissent into this place. It is completely sidelining the whole point of black lives matter and tries to delegitimise the issue. So we agree that that motion is totally inappropriate. We would have opposed it.

I note that the Labor Party were going to vote with us in support of our own notice of motion No. 604. That is a perfectly appropriate motion. We are concerned at the trend of this government disallowing from discussion certain matters in motions when they happen to be a little bit inconvenient for the government. So, whilst we support the fact that a divisive motion won't proceed, complex foreign policy matters—which seem to be determined at the whim of this government, because they bring their own so-called complex foreign policy matters whenever they like—are disallowed in this place and now it seems that the government can unilaterally decide that other motions can also be denied formality. So, whilst we won't object to the denial of formality to motion 612, I do want to note that we are concerned at this trend of the government unilaterally denying discussion in this chamber and putting it off to general business, which we all know happens on an infrequent basis and requires other machinations in order to get certain issues raised.