Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, you do have a Senate majority at the moment, but let me tell you that, after next year’s federal election, that Senate majority will be gone, because the Australian people are desperate to rescue the Senate from the intolerance and heavy-handedness that we are seeing from this government. People do not like the abandonment of multilateralism. Don’t you think Australians are humiliated today that on the London Tube people can pick up a free newspaper and see that Prime Minister John Howard has moved to overrule the civil union legislation in the ACT? The whole of London can pick that up today and see where Australia is going as the deputy sheriff to the United States—abandoning multilateralism and now abandoning even the principle of fairness and equal treatment under the law.