Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I was saying last week in debating this excellent piece of legislation presented by the Leader of the Opposition that, clearly, what we have here is an arrangement between the Australian Greens and the government, which is harmful to the rest of the participants in debate in this chamber. Crossbench senators and opposition senators have been penalised by a vindictive approach being taken by this government—the reduction of resources available to members of this place to do their jobs properly and hold this government to account. I described it as a 'buy now, pay later' arrangement between the Australian Greens and the government, where they get that beautiful, sumptuously appointed party room down the other end of the building there with beautiful, comfortable, leather seats and large, special-species-timbered desks to sit at and make their big decisions, all in return for supporting these dodgy deals with the government.

It is a disappointing approach to democracy. You would expect more from the Greens, who, typically, are defenders of everyone's rights to do their jobs. But the leader of the Greens has moved a second reading amendment to this piece of legislation which, I will point out, is very similar to a motion that has been put into this place by Senator Payman. Given the leader of the Greens proposed this second reading amendment, I will be very interested to see how the Greens vote on Senator Payman's motion when it comes up for decision in this place. I would expect, given they are proposing such a thing, that they will support that motion, because that would be the right thing to do, because they have gone and put something like this on record. Let's see how that goes. This is an excellent bill and I commend it.