Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Acting Deputy President. Nothing should surprise those on this side of the chamber. The Greens demonstrate on what has now become an almost daily basis that they are only interested in observing the rules of the Senate when it suits their own particular political advantage. Yet day after day, and in particular in relation to the current debate that we have before the Senate, they confirm that they see themselves as nothing more and nothing less than an elitist group who believe that they are so important that the rules and regulations of the Senate should not apply to them. That is the reason that the Special Minister of State has had to table a statement in relation to the resignation of the Commonwealth Ombudsman. Again I go to the Special Minister of State's statement, in which he says:

… Mr Asher's actions in dealing with an individual Senator and framing questions as he did, were not on the public record or otherwise apparent to other members of the Parliamentary Committee, and the questions themselves were far from neutral. He offered briefing on legislation that has not been introduced and on other matters that would have been of interest to all Members and Senators.

But not all members and senators were offered that courtesy, because Senator Hanson-Young was having a private meeting with the Ombudsman in which they developed questions to be raised in the estimates process that ultimately compromised the Ombudsman, the most independent office in the land, and led to his resignation. Again, you would expect nothing less from a member of the Australian Greens.

As each day goes past Australians are now waking up to the fact that the Greens are quite possibly nothing more and nothing less than a party of complete, total and utter contradictions. Who can forget the hours over many years that the Greens have stood in this place and told the rest of us that the guillotining of bills is an abhorrent political practice? Why? Senator Bob Brown is on record as saying this: it prevents minor parties from engaging in proper political debate. Then what do we have? We have the Greens supporting time and time again under this new, unholy Labor-Greens alliance the guillotining of debate in this chamber. The vote that will be taken tomorrow in the chamber is the perfect example of that.

Another example: on one hand the Greens garner votes by pretending to be a cuddly, benign environmental party who are holier than thou. Yet what did we have the other day? Instead of taking over the chair of the environment committee, what committee did they want to take control of and what committee did they indeed take control of? The Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee. This again confirms that they are not the cuddly, benign environmental party that they want the Australian people—