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

The process here is one of denying amendments to motions that are put up for formality and we have had a series of denials of those amendments in the Senate in recent days. Senators may notice that has not stopped the effect of the amendments coming before the chamber as they doing that as whole motions seriatim and that will continue. I think, however, that where amendments are to be moved to the motions there ought to be a better mechanism and the amendments ought to be treated with a vote the same as the substantial motions. We have not got to that point yet and here we are debating whether there should be a suspension of standing orders to effectively debate the motion—and I will listen to debate to work that out. But what I do want to say is that Senator Hanson-Young is absolutely right here: what we have is a move by the coalition, which had no compunction a few years ago to be locking up hundreds of children behind razor wire in deserts in Australia to the point where there was psychological scarring for life, now claiming that sending people to this country—