Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Deputy President, you may have missed it, but I was on my feet. I wanted to seek leave to make a short statement about my motion, general business notice of motion No. 765, which I understand you are able to do straight after a vote.

Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Leave is granted for one minute.

Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I just wanted to get on record how surprised the Greens are that Labor didn't vote with us to support the Greens on general business notice of motion No. 765, about making pensions fairer in this country. I could probably spend my whole minute talking about the breathtaking hypocrisy of the Labor Party, who two years ago attacked the Greens and Labor's new member in the House today, Ged Kearney, with a robo-call the following Christmas for making the pension system in this country fairer, taking money from better-off pensioners and giving the lowest income pensioners in this country a pay rise.

What I will say in the remaining few seconds that I have left is that I'm glad the Labor Party have read our motion from last week and that today, I understand, they have disclosed that they are going to look after the lowest income pensioners with their policy. They need to disclose this policy and get it out in the open so that we can actually see that they've thought it through and we can have a real debate on this issue, rather than the crass politics that we've seen in this place in the last two weeks.