Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Yet again, those on the opposite side are showing that they are prepared to support that a senator not have the right to be allowed to speak in this chamber. For those who need to be caught up with the process, this is what happened. In the first instance, this morning, it's the opposition's private senators' time. We sought to bring on a bill to debate. The government denied the opposition the right to bring that bill on. Worse than that, the government moved to not have opposition private senators' time today. Let's wait to see when they try that on any other person who's not part of the government.

Secondly, Senator McKenzie sought leave to make a statement—ironically, for about two minutes. That was denied. Senator McKenzie then sought, as she is entitled to, to exercise her right pursuant to a contingent motion standing in her name. For those of you who've been here a long time but still don't know what a contingent motion is, I suggest you read the Notice Paper. It's been there for time immemorial. She is the Leader of the National Party in the Senate; she therefore has contingent motions standing in her name. She stood and sought to exercise her right, pursuant to the contingent motion, to explain why, as a senator elected in this place to represent the Australian people, she should not be denied leave by the Albanese Labor government and why she should not be denied leave by the Greens, the great friends of the Albanese Labor government, to make a statement. I am entitled to jump, as part of the suspension process, to support Senator McKenzie's right in this chamber to come in here and make a statement.

Ironically, we're already at four minutes past 10. How's that working out for the government? We actually would have hit a hard marker at 10 past 10 had you allowed Senator Duniam to just move his motion to bring on, as we are entitled to, a bill that we want to debate in the chamber in the first place. You may not like the topic—the fact that we want to put in place laws to ensure that people can't go overseas and help people who've gone to a declared area come back to Australia, to criminalise that—a national security piece of legislation. Wouldn't it have just been simpler to allow it, instead of trying to silence democracy, instead of trying to silence the ability of senators on the non-government side of the chamber to just stand up on Thursday morning, when it says clearly on the Notice Paper that it's their slot for private senators' bills?