George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I bear in mind your guidance, Mr Acting Deputy President. I am sure Senator Wright is a decent person, and I cannot fail to imagine that privately she would feel quite uncomfortable with the position in which she has been placed. This is a power play. Let nobody have any illusions about that. I follow on from some remarks that my friend Senator Michael Ronaldson made about what has driven this power play—that is, not merely the rise of the Greens but the invasion of the Australian government by the Greens.

In this peculiar time in Australian history we have an Australian Labor Party government whose agenda is dictated by the Greens. One of the many reasons we in the opposition regard this as an outrageous misuse of power is the Greens are not a crossbench party in any real sense of the word. They are to all intents and purposes an element, an essential ingredient, of this government, so much so that the government is in power today because of a written agreement executed by the Prime Minister and Senator Brown. No crossbench party has had more power over a government in our history than the Australian Greens have over this Labor government today. That is why we in the opposition say that committee chairmanships reserved for the crossbench parties ought not to be given to the Greens, because the Greens are not, except in a purely theoretical sense, a crossbench party; they are an integral part of the Gillard government.

I am, as some senators may be aware, something of a student of Australian political history and I have had many, many long and enjoyable discussions with my friend Senator John Faulkner about the history of the Australian Labor Party. I acknowledge that although the Australian Labor Party are my party's principal political antagonists the Australian Labor Party nevertheless—as Australia's oldest political party, having been formed during the shearers strike in Queensland in 1891, famously under the Tree of Knowledge in Barcaldine—have a long and honourable place in Australian political history. There are many of the great events of Australian history for which the Australian Labor Party was responsible. In particular, no-one will forget that it was a government of the Australian Labor Party, led by John Curtin, that took Australia through the most critical stages of the Pacific war.

Throughout the decades, we in the Liberal Party and the Labor Party have had bitter disputes on a range of different issues which have decided the course of the history of our nation. Most of the time, I say, the Liberal Party has been right, but some of the time I concede, because I am a generous person, the Labor Party has been right. But in the course of all of those decades the shape and course of Australian history have been charted by the debate between the coalition parties and the Australian Labor Party. Together, through the dialectical process of parliamentary debate and political argument, we have shaped the direction of this country, so that where Australia is today is in some sense the product of both our political traditions: the Liberal tradition and the Labor tradition.

The Australian Greens share no part of that tradition. There is no element of Australia today, the most successful and prosperous nation in the world, that is thanks to anything the Australian Greens have done—nothing—and yet at this particular strange, peculiar point in our nation's story all of a sudden the Greens, opportunistically seizing the circumstance of a hung parliament, have seized control of a Labor government and seized control of its agenda.

Let me give you two examples: the carbon tax and asylum seeker policy. Last year, of the 150 members elected to the House of Representatives at the 2010 election, 148 were elected on a promise not to introduce a carbon tax. Every member of the coalition, every member of the Australian Labor Party and most of the Independents were elected on an undertaking not to introduce a carbon tax. Yet today we are on the threshold of passing legislation in this chamber to introduce a carbon tax, because of the Greens and because of the undue influence the Greens have, the capacity of the Greens to exercise political duress over the Australian Labor Party.

The other great issue of the day is asylum seeker policy. At the 2010 election both the coalition and the Australian Labor Party went to the people promising to build their asylum seeker policy around the policy of offshore processing. Today we do not have offshore processing, once again because of the Greens. The two great issues of the day—a carbon tax and asylum seeker policy—have produced outcomes at variance from that which both sides of politics promised the Australian people only last year, because of the political duress that the Greens have been able to exercise over this government.

I join with my friend Senator Ronaldson in saying to you, Mr Acting Deputy President Cameron—and you and I are quite friendly, we chide each other in the corridors; I can't help liking you, I am embarrassed to admit, though I might be one of the few—