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

There is one set of standards that applies to journalists, who Senator Abetz has turned his aim at. But the other set of standards applies to unknown people, who he says are journalists—and only he can tell us whether they are fictional or not—that he wants to protect. He says that the role of the opposition is to test material provided. Well, so is the role of the Privileges Committee. Its role is, above all, to defend the integrity of the committee system and this chamber and to make sure that there is no avenue for deceit, cover-up, misinformation or the Senate being left without information which ought to be before it. If there were integrity and honesty in the stand of Senator Abetz, who now identifies himself, he would have ensured that, rather than being paired, he came across and voted for the inquiry, because the inquiry would have enabled him to clear any inference at all about him. But instead—in a very sad day for the Senate—the numbers were used in a political exercise to block the Privileges Committee from defending the interests of this Senate and its committee system. I would ask all members of the coalition and Senator Fielding to reflect on that. That motion should be back in here and reversed before the day is through, and it is up to them to decide whether they are going to do that or not. But, of course, there is no chance, because there is a political influence on the vote in this chamber to defend the opposition.