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

Thank you. The Telegraph says that these amendments were quietly introduced on Tuesday night, but they were introduced on Friday night and circulated. A press release went out on 1 March headed ‘Brown welcomes government support for Greens push to grant territories power’. That press release announced exactly what we were doing—there was no ‘quietly’ about it. I do not know why Benson and Lewis were asleep when these reports went out. What did go out on Tuesday night was an explanatory piece of information which went to every member of the Senate. The article goes on:

The amendment made the Bill far more radical and turned a “machinery” bill into one that would pave the way for the territories to allow legal euthanasia and gay marriage ...

That is quite wrong. The amendment did nothing of the sort; it simply extended to the Northern Territory and Norfolk Island the same provisions that applied with the ACT. It did not alter or make more radical in any way the legislation that was before the Senate.

This is a very important piece of the political process. We cannot expect to have an honest public discourse if we have journalists who deliberately deceive the public about processes which are on the record, which are honestly put, by transmogrifying or misrepresenting those processes. The amendment did not turn a machinery bill into one that would do something else; it did nothing of the sort. I do not expect that the Murdoch press would have the honesty or the probity—with their readers, let alone with themselves—to correct this matter, although I will ask them to do so.

The story says that the bill would limit the Commonwealth’s ability to overturn territory legislation. It does nothing of the sort. It cannot do that. Section 122 of the Constitution provides for that. So it does not limit the Commonwealth’s ability. It certainly took away the executive’s ability, but the Commonwealth is this parliament. Mr Benson and Mr Lewis, who are bottom feeders when it comes to reporting the political process, should lift their game if they are going to be seen historically as fair players in letting the public of Australia know, in fact, what is happening in this parliamentary process.

Of course, behind this, in the reporting of the Senate by these particular reporters, is a political motive, which is to attack the government and the compact made between the government and certain Independents and the Greens. But the only compact I entered into in the last 24 hours was one with the opposition. I spoke to Senator Brandis about this yesterday. That was to agree to allow the committee—which the opposition had, three years ago, not wanted to take place—to look at this legislation. I have not seen this compact between the Greens and Senator Brandis and the coalition turned into news by the Murdoch press, because it has a very clear political intent, which should be kept to its editorial columns but which is written up in this most mischievous and unfair-to-the-public report in today’s paper.

I thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President, for allowing me to make those comments and I finally come back to the innovation we have today, which is private senators’ time here in the parliament. The Greens have worked very hard to achieve this outcome. It was first used by Senator Nash in this house in the last week of sitting. There is much more private senators’ legislation coming through here. As Ralph Nader—indeed, it goes back to Jefferson—commented, ‘Information is the currency of democracy.’ But there is a responsibility for those people who express as much ignorance as Benson and Lewis did today to catch up with the people’s vote in this great country of ours and the new arrangement that allows all parties to take part in legislating in the parliament, in fact for the first time in a century.

We are doing no more or less than happens in New Zealand, Denmark, Sweden, Germany or Ireland. The feedback I get is that people like it. The Murdoch press may not like it but the people do. The feedback is very positive indeed. I am very proud to be part of that and very happy today to be putting forward this legislation to protect children from junk food advertising, even if it is not going to proceed. I accept that that is the way the democratic parliament of Australia, one of the four oldest continuous democracies in the world, proceeds. I thank all senators for their contribution to this debate and I commend this bill to the second reading.

Question put:

That this bill be now read a second time.