Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Hansard source

I have just about heard it all today—three minutes from the Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate and 30 minutes of filibustering from the Australian Labor Party. One can only imagine that they are out there at the moment trying to nail Senator Fielding to the mast in relation to this matter. That is the way they operate. They come in here and they talk about openness and transparency, and then they go around and bang on doors, forcing these people to agree with their position.

Let us just go back and have a close look at this. Senator Faulkner was talking about his desire for change, the drive for electoral reform. I take the Senate back to March last year when, in this very chamber, there was a notice of motion put up by the opposition in relation to a reference to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters which talked about disclosure, which talked about tax deductibility, which talked about third-party involvement and which talked about electoral reform in its most holistic sense. Who supported that motion? Let us go through it: the National and Liberal parties in coalition, the Greens, the Democrats—God bless their souls—and Senator Fielding supported that reference to the joint standing committee for wholesale electoral reform. Who was the party who refused to support it?