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

I sincerely thank all members for their contributions to this debate. I am sure all the contributions will be taken into account if, as seems likely, the Procedure Committee gets this reference. I reiterate that on Friday night I went and saw the President and, having used the device of flagging dissent, said that I wanted to consider that over the weekend, to look at a more positive outcome. And I am very pleased to say that that is potentially in the offing.

To Senator Ferguson and Senator Barnaby Joyce, I would point out that there have been some precedents in the matter of allowing children here under very limited and special circumstances; that is part of the Senate record. There has not been a rule which said that there was a prohibition, and that line should never be crossed. I might say to Barnaby Joyce: people tried to apply that rule on a very famous occasion 2,000 years ago. Christ said on that occasion, ‘Suffer little children to come unto me’—do not let the officials get in the way and deny children access that other people have.

I simply say that because we need a little bit of compassion in this place on occasions like this, and it is very curmudgeonly of Senator Joyce to be talking about this as a stunt, particularly when he himself said, ‘There are 76 people in our nation elected to go beyond the bar, and that is all.’ Well, he is elected to come beyond the bar but he was absent from that very important vote on Thursday night, and he tells us, by way of excuse, that he was talking with people in his room. Whether that was Mitch Hooke again or whoever he has not disclosed to us. But it was Senator Joyce’s responsibility to be here and to vote on that issue. How dare he point a finger of blame at Senator Hanson-Young, who did everything she could, despite the difficult circumstances, to be here for a vote which she knew was on an important issue, and who ran into difficulties which we now know. The big critic of this has been the Leader of the National Party in the Senate, who has no excuse for his failure to be here at all. Let me say, through you, Acting Deputy President, if the time arises when Senator Joyce finds himself on the wrong side of the rules for a perfectly human reason, I would expect that I will be one of the first to give him some latitude and show some compassion and some fair-mindedness under those circumstances—something that he has denied Senator Hanson-Young and, indeed, it is not the representation that I would have expected from his party.

I note that Senator Ferguson said Senator Hanson-Young should have asked for a pair. Again, he is a senator who was not here on Thursday. The two most trenchant critics of Hanson-Young and me and the Greens, who have come in here to cut across the general goodwill towards there being a good outcome from this measure, are the two senators who failed to turn up for the vote, whatever their excuse might be—there has been no good excuse put before the chamber—on Thursday night. Let that be on the record.

I would point out that, when I first came here, gentlemen always had to wear a coat but ladies did not. It was Senator O’Chee, again from the National Party, who demanded that I be gagged when, one hot summer’s afternoon, on a perfectly reasonable day, I came in here without a coat on. I had on a shirt and tie but no coat, and he demanded that I be ejected. I ask you: where is Senator O’Chee today?