Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to make a short statement.

Leave not granted.

I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent me from making a statement here today in the Australian Senate.

What we are seeing from the government benches, from their partners in crime when it suits them—the Greens—is the shutting down of the Australian people's voice. We actually have a chamber that represents the diversity of Australian views. The Australian Greens have a great swagger, those senators, and there are One Nation, Independents, the National Party and the Liberal Party. What we've seen this week is a government so out of control of this chamber that they have shut down and silenced senators from right across the country, right across the political spectrum. And what we've seen this morning is a refusal by the government to allow His Majesty's opposition to bring our bill to this chamber to be debated—something that, in my 15 years here, has been a matter of course. We are respectful—