Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

I will take the interjection because it shows it even more, colleagues. When we have Labor ministers on the other side of the chamber in defence of the Greens, doesn't it carry more weight to the argument that they are in partnership, that they are in coalition? That is precisely why this extra chairmanship should not be granted.

That being the case, let us just have a look at what the Greens have chosen for their second committee: the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee. Maybe I am missing something here, but when I think of the Greens I think about them talking about the environment. Colleagues, maybe you might think something different, but when I look at the Greens I think 'the environment'. It sort of goes, like 'horse' goes with 'saddle'. But they want the legal and constitutional affairs committee. Why would the party who call themselves the Australian Greens, who spend their time talking about the environment, not want the environment committee, particularly when the environment committee also covers communications—and I know that Senator Ludlam has a very keen and genuine interest in communications? Why would they not want the chair of the environment and communications committee? That simply does not make sense, and that says to the Australian people that the Greens are duplicitous, because if they truly were the party of the environment they would want to chair the environment committee. I do not think you have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out.

I think there would be a number of people who are listening at the moment, thinking: 'Why on earth don't the Greens want the environment committee? Why do they want the legal and constitutional affairs committee?' This is a question to be asked of the Australian Greens. This is really serious. If the Greens' core business is the environment, why do they not want the environment committee? That, colleagues, is the question for the Australian Greens. You can only surmise, you can only deduce, that the reason they want the legal and constitutional affairs committee is for the purposes of their social agenda. We can only deduce from that that the Greens' social agenda takes priority over the environment.

I would say that there are a lot of people who have supported the Greens over past years—not that there are that many of them when you look at the whole perspective of Australia—who would think, rightly or wrongly, that they are the party of the environment, not that they are the party of the social agenda that they want to prosecute. And yet here today we have the Greens wanting the legal and constitutional affairs committee chairmanship, not the environment committee chairmanship. Colleagues, I cannot for the life of me work that out. I tell you: I am starting to miss the Democrats, because at least they had the courage of their convictions. At least they were prepared to stand up for what they believed in, and at least they made a contribution to this chamber that was not part of a Labor-Greens-Independent government.

What an extraordinary day we have today, when the Leader of the Australian Greens—trying, of course, to upset the Nationals, as he likes to try to do—refers to a National as a 'poddy calf'. If that is the best that Senator Brown can do, I think he is going to have to come up with something a little better. I am a little more thick-skinned than that. I tend not to think of myself as a poddy calf. I thought Senator Brown might have been able to do a little better. What sort of pear shaped day is this? It is extraordinary that we see this situation.

The Greens also like to rail on about transparency and about the processes of the chamber, and yet, today, what do we see? We see that very process being undermined, that very process being manipulated to give an outcome to the government side of the chamber that should not be delivered. It simply should not be.

They know this on the other side of the chamber. They know the numbers do not stack up. They know that they are the government. They know the Greens are part of the coalition. They know. But this will show the Australian people the true face of the Greens. We are seeing today the real Greens. They are, as John Anderson, ex-Deputy Prime Minister, so eloquently put it many years ago, the watermelons: green on the outside and pink in the middle. When you chop a watermelon in half, Senator Ronaldson, you know as well as I do that there is a lot more red than there is green. And that is what has become so clear today, because the Greens have placed their social agenda as more important than their environmental concerns.

My colleagues and I on this side of the chamber have always suspected it. We have suspected that for a long time. But today it has been proven. Today we have the proof that the Greens' social agenda is more important than their environmental agenda. The reason I say that, and the reason that that cannot be argued against, is that they have chosen to take the chairmanship of the legal and constitutional affairs committee and not the chairmanship of the environment committee. This might seem a small issue, but this is a huge, watershed day. This is the day that the Greens showed that they are not an environmental party. This is about their social agenda. This is about social engineering. This is about their social agenda, and we have seen the true Greens today.