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

We of course take a very different position to One Nation on the issue of Black Lives Matter and Indigenous deaths in custody, as I'm sure people well know. But we are particularly concerned that the government, with the apparent support of the opposition, is now the sole arbiter of what is going to be allowed to be discussed in motions. In our view, this is an infringement on the power of the Senate to determine its own agenda and, in particular, for smaller parties to put issues that are a bit inconvenient for the two big parties to deal with.

So whilst we would have opposed the motion, were it being put, we are again concerned, as we were yesterday, that this is a trend of the government, silencing any party in this Senate from putting motions on the Notice Paper.

An honourable senator interjecting—

Just to the argument that it can be debated at another time: we know that, but the instances of those times are far reduced. We have formal motions every day. General business and the ability of the crossbench, in particular, to get time in that session is vastly limited. So this is in effect a silencing, and it's that issue that we take issue with.