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

What a wonderful spectacle! I am not sure who is giving instructions to whom over there—whether it is Senator Arbib, the queenmaker, or Senator Bob Brown giving the other instructions. But it is quite clear that the Labor-Green alliance—unfortunately, aided and abetted by the crossbenches—have voted for a gag. That was not supposed to happen in this new paradigm. How long has it taken the Australian Labor Party and the Greens to sell out on all those high and mighty words? As we have seen so often and as we know in this place, just because it is Labor Party rhetoric, just because it is Green rhetoric and, with great respect to my friends on the crossbenches, just because it is their rhetoric, does not mean that they will deliver.

Let it be noted—and I am sorry to say this—that Senator Xenophon and Senator Fielding both voted for the gag. They both voted for the gag. Do not give us any more hypocrisy at the doors or at press conferences, suggesting that you are concerned about every parliamentarian being allowed to ventilate their particular point of view on an issue and that everybody should be allowed to enter a debate and put their point of view. By your actions today, by your vote this evening, you have shown that that means nothing. It was just a stunt to try to justify why the Greens sided with the Labor Party, and certain other Independents in the other place. They joined with the Labor Party to form government, but the Labor Party treat the Independents in the other place with contempt. They have broken their word to the Independents in the other place. Senator Bob Brown and the other Greens, those great champions of free speech who always believe that everybody ought to be allowed to have their say in this place, have voted to apply the gag.

Of course, this is a gag motion in the context of the Labor Party gagging the release of information to this parliament. They are not allowing information to be put before us in relation to the business plan, the government response to the implementation study and, chances are—most importantly of all—the Greenhill analysis of the NBN business plan.