Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—From time to time, honourable senators miss divisions for a range of reasons. We in the coalition have always accepted that and fully acknowledge that misadventure does happen to people right around this chamber. But what we do not accept is the hyperbole to which we were submitted by the Leader of the Australian Greens in the past when two of our coalition colleagues missed a division. We were subjected to a rant that if we could not control our own senators it showed what a rabble we were, how out of control the opposition were—all the hyperbole under the sun. I warned Senator Brown at the time that something like that may well happen to the Australian Greens. Who was the first Australian Green to miss a vote? It was Senator Bob Brown himself. Today, we now have another Green who has missed a vote. If it is so difficult to manage a group of five, one wonders how difficult it will be when it becomes a group of nine on 1 July.