Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

No, they are postponing consideration of it, Senator. That means simply whittling away the opportunity of the Senate to make a considered decision about when it will sit to determine very important amendments to the legislation, which from the Greens point of view ought to be going back out to the community for discussion and input so that we can be properly democratically representative of the community we come from. These are huge issues. These are issues about the right of our democratic community to be informed from a wide variety of sources instead of having an ever-diminishing number of people controlling the media. It is fundamental to democracy.

We do not go along with a government that says, ‘Sometime later today, we will decide whether or not the Senate sits tonight to consider legislation that it has not seen.’ That is an appalling process. The government ought to think again about that. If the government wants to have extra sittings on this matter, then it should schedule another sitting week. It does not want to do that, because it does not want to face the scrutiny of parliament on more days than it can help. The whole process is one of the Senate being abused by the executive—by the Prime Minister’s office, and at his direction. The minister is the hapless intermediary in that process. We will not accept it.