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

Senator Milne is the clear choice for this position if we are to take seriously this role of President of the Senate, and I do. The role is constitutionally the most important that any parliamentarian in either house can hold. It requires a person with great experience, and that includes public experience and, if possible, national and international experience. And it requires somebody who is going to serve this Senate without fear or favour, and Senator Milne would certainly do that. She is a candidate of enormous integrity and has a fearless ability to be honest and to be fair—qualities which are essential to a chair of the Senate. Senator Milne, besides 10 years parliamentary experience in Tasmania where, amongst other things, she very successfully led the party in the balance of power in the late 1990s, has now been in this chamber for a year more than a term and knows very well how it works and knows more particularly how better it should work. I point out that she was also Vice-President of the World Conservation Union in Switzerland—a United Nations associated body—for some years. She has also been chair of the global council of the World Conservation Union and remains chair of the Oceania chapter of the council. She is also a United Nations Global 500 award recipient.

I ask senators of the government and the opposition to listen carefully to this. This job should not be a sinecure. The arrangement between the government and the opposition whereby one takes the chair and one takes the deputy chair does not serve this Senate properly. The best person should be appointed and voted to the chair, and this should be a free vote. It should not be corralled by a cosy arrangement between the two big parties in this place. It is time that ended. That does not serve this Senate fairly or well, and the Greens—