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

If it helps the senator, I loved feeding poddy calves straight out of a bucket in other parts of my career.

It is the case that the opposition's record in this place when utilising the talent right around the Senate in the committee system, particularly for the chairs of committees, was usurped in a way that will go down in the blacker annals of abuse of parliament in those years where the Howard government, after getting control of both houses of parliament, appointed to itself the chair of every committee in the place. We are not proposing that, even though there would be the numbers in here to do that if the government and the crossbench so decided. But we are proposing that the talent of the crossbench be utilised in the chair. I propose that Senator Penny Wright would be an admirable chair of this committee.