Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Industry and Innovation) Share this | Hansard source

I would argue that the motion is urgent. It is urgent because it's important. It's urgent because it's important, and it's important because it goes to a series of questions that go to the question that the senator was proposing to ask itself. It goes materially to the urgency of that question. It goes to the rights of senators, particularly backbench senators in this Senate, 19 of them, whom yesterday's resolution would disenfranchise entirely by deliberate design from a majority resolution of this Senate. It's important and it's urgent because it goes to the conventions and the kind of modes of behaviour and the modes of operation that a minority chamber demands. That's why it's important and it's urgent.

I can tell you that, in addition to that, it is urgent because what it does is expose the lack of political judgement and the lack of interest in the democratic institutions that are engaged and the democratic principles that are engaged in this place. It is not a majority chamber. It is a chamber where there are a series of parties, none of whom commands a majority themselves. What that means is that conventions really matter and that, if you adopt an approach which is all about trying to impose, by majority will, on the chamber to exclude people—