Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

The names are written down in a division so everybody knows who voted for what particular motion. It's not a secret. You don't get found out. There isn't a secret, hidden Hansard record somewhere where the votes are kept. The reality is it's public, and that's why we're talking about it. But the poor old member for Sydney never knows quite how the procedures work in this place. She can't do a matter of personal explanation, and now we discover that the member for Sydney thinks that there's a secret vote in the Senate and we were caught out voting for something, when everyone knows it is on the public record.

So we do reject that motion. We've apologised for it. We regret the fact that an administrative error caused us to vote for it. Before I was rudely interrupted by the member for Sydney, I was saying that one of the most important things we can do in this country is maintain bipartisanship around issues like racism. We've had many of these debates over the years. As the Manager of Opposition Business said, a few weeks ago we had an impromptu debate in this House, after Senator Anning's maiden speech, in which a number of members gave very good speeches deploring the speech of Senator Anning and reaffirming our bipartisan commitment in this chamber to abhorring all forms of racism.

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