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

We've just heard the Australian Greens talking about teaming up to block scrutiny of legislation and hiding things from the gaze of this parliament. So it's probably a good opportunity to remind ourselves that not so long ago did the Australian Greens team up with the Australian government, the Labor Party, to stop scrutiny of legislation around actually making sure that this parliament could function. If we want to talk about dodgy deals and people teaming up to prevent scrutiny, why on earth were we not allowed to have scrutiny of legislation that would ensure crossbenchers and the opposition in this place would be appropriately resourced to ensure we that we can do our jobs properly to scrutinise legislation, as the speaker from the Greens just said?

We know exactly why. I think my colleagues on the crossbench, the Independent senators, know it's because of the 'buy now, pay later' arrangement that was entered into by the Australian Greens for their sumptuously appointed, beautifully furnished new party room down the end of the building here in return for their silence on these arrangements around staff. So they come in here and they feign outrage about the lack of scrutiny and terrible deals between the government and the opposition. What about exposing what we saw last week when it came to that crowd, the Australian Greens, who'll happily sell out for all of these sorts of arrangements in order to prevent us from having a proper discussion around resourcing for non-government parties in this place except for the Australian Greens? They're the ones who did alright out of this. Not only do they get to keep their staff but they get that beautiful room. We've all seen the pictures. A million dollars worth of taxpayers' money was put into this and it means no scrutiny. If we want to talk about deals done between parties, there is the best one I've seen so far. It's tangible, clear to see for all and something that I think we should not forget about when it comes to this discussion around deals done between parties.

Whether you want to call it 'buy now, pay later', 'quick and collect', 'frequent shopper' or 'frequent flyer upgrades', that's what the Australian Greens are in it for here. Whatever the price is, they will happily accept it and they will do it in order to get whatever it is they want in any transaction in this parliament. So I will not have them come in here and talk about the hypocrisy of parties when, in fact, they are the worst offenders when it comes to this sort of thing.