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

I would recognise that there are five Liberals here. From where I am, there are two on the left-hand side of the chamber and two on the right, three up the back and some 20 to 30 outside. There is a complete disarray here. This is an important oversight measure that the Greens are moving here, to keep an oversight, as Senator Milne explained, on the expenditure of this infrastructure fund. It is a gargantuan amount of public money and parliament should have particular scrutiny of it. I would call upon the Liberals to come back in here and support this oversight amendment. It was actually sponsored by them. It will not delay this legislation. There is no way the government will hold up this infrastructure legislation because some parliamentary oversight has been put to the chair. I have never ever seen such disarray from one of the major parties in this chamber as we are seeing right now. I cannot fathom what it is that has occurred with the Liberal Party here tonight, but it is enormously destructive. I say to the Liberal Party that they should come back in here and regain some ground by supporting this sensible oversight in the government’s legislation in the interests of this nation. Otherwise, the impression one gets is that in these last two weeks the Turnbull administration decided it would capitulate to everything that the government put forward. That is not healthy for democracy, it is not healthy for a bicameral system and it certainly is not healthy for the coalition.

I just say to the Liberals, the majority of whom are back in their rooms listening to this, those who have vacated the chamber, those who have vacated their responsibility to be voting in here: come back in here and vote for this oversight. That is my message as to this Liberal disarray that we are seeing here tonight. They should at least come back in here and regain some of the authority, some of their responsibility and obligation to the voters, which we have just seen abandoned due to their absence from this chamber.