Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy President. I have stated the facts. Facts are something that Senator Bob Brown has a great deal of difficulty dealing with, as does Senator Milne. As a very quick example: yesterday we were told how the Greens were subjected to a delay in relation to the Privileges Committee hearing: 'We were the ones who were being subjected to defamation, and yet the committee decided to go on holidays and not respond to any of the correspondence until the summer holidays were over.' Let's read the Committee of Privileges report paragraph 1.14: 'By letter dated 23 December 2011, Mr Browne, legal counsel for the Australian Greens, indicated that Senator Brown and Senator Milne would be seeking an extension of time to the reference.' They sought the extension of time, and yet we had senators Brown and Milne deliberately seeking to mislead this Senate in relation to the time delay. Similarly, we had Senator Brown just then asserting that what I had said on radio about the Greens being engaged in a legal frolic of their own was somehow me saying that this reference to the Privileges Committee was just a legal frolic of mine—a complete misrepresentation of the facts, a complete misrepresentation of what has actually occurred.

Back to where all this started: Senator Brandis gave a very proper personal explanation. It was not debating the issues; it was setting out the facts. No evidence has been suggested that anything in that statement is untrue. There is nothing that is suggesting that Senator Brandis has misled the Senate. Therefore, from the coalition point of view, there is no need to suspend standing orders to waste the Senate's time to allow Senator Brown to go yet again on another one of his very nasty personal attacks. We are getting sick of this Leader of the Australian Greens attacking the President of the Senate, attacking the Clerk of the Senate, attacking Senator Kroger, attacking everybody but themselves. They have no-one to blame but themselves for the dilemma that they find themselves in.