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

It is an outrageous process that is taking place here, but it is part of the fact that the government, with the numbers in this place, has the ability to guillotine the legislation unless government members vote against that guillotine and allow a proper debate in this place. While the numbers prevail, so the guillotine will prevail. The one very important fact here is the fact that the government has also got behind it in this matter the vote of Family First. I would not be surprised if the Family First senator came in and voted against the gag, because he has now safely committed his vote to the media barons and the government through this legislation.

I want to take this opportunity to comment on that vital vote and the speech that has been so decisive in this matter, delivered in here yesterday by Family First. It is a completely incoherent speech when you look at it. Senator Fielding said:

... Family First is concerned about the possibility of a monopoly of our major media outlets and the potential abuse of power that that represents.

He also said that Family First believes that the arguments against this legislation are strong, but then he said that people out there—and that includes families—do not care; they want to be entertained. Then, extraordinarily, without the debate being enjoined on the reasons why we should be concerned about this legislation concentrating media ownership, Senator Fielding committed Family First strongly to backing it. What a dereliction of duty that was.

He is absent from the chamber, as he has been through most of the process, and of course now we are going to get the debate truncated. But what is very significant here is that Family First, put in here by the Labor Party through its preferences in Victoria, has become a de facto part of the Howard government when it gets to vital legislation like this.