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

by leave—What the government executive is saying here is that the Senate should be totally ignored, that it has no right to discuss international matters and that is the prerogative of the executive which has, of course, turned the House of Representatives into a rubber stamp. What nonsense is this? If the government believes that the for and against of a motion like this and the preceding motion on Rwanda have not being adequately canvassed, then I suggest it finds private members’ time. The government will be aware that the Greens are moving to establish reasonable private members’ time to allow such matters to be debated.

The government cannot have it both ways. It cannot on the one hand block private members’ time from being properly established so that there is reasonable time for discussing such motions and on the other hand say, ‘We won’t support such motions because we haven’t had time to debate them.’ That is a total abuse of argument before a chamber which ought to be discussing just these matters. It should be not past note here that on the matter of Afghanistan, which is extraordinarily important to this nation, there has been no full debate about Australia’s involvement in that country, because the government and presumably opposition do not want such a debate. I have flagged a motion to allow that issue to be properly debated when we come back in the first session next year. Of course that should be debated in this place, and the government should make it possible for such a debate to take place. Copping out like this is no excuse.

Question negatived.

by leave—I did not call a division because I know there are other important matters that some senators want to go to, but I note that the government and opposition opposed that motion.