Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Acting Deputy President. You can see with the Greens political party that when the truth is put out there they do everything possible to stop free speech and to stop senators in this chamber expressing their views on why different political parties take the approach that they do. During this session the Greens have joined with the Labor Party in stopping free speech on a wide range of bills. That debate is supposed to be the purview of this parliament. We are meant to talk about policy issues, to talk about legislation and to suggest improve­ments, even if we agree with the bill in the ultimate vote. Debate is essential if you are going to have a democracy. You can understand from the Greens and the Labor Party that they are not terribly keen about parliamentary democracy. They just want to ram through secret deals that the Greens political party and the Labor Party have got together and done behind closed doors, usually without consultation.

The Greens leader, Senator Brown, is not an environmentalist. I think that is becoming more and more obvious. He is, as is increasingly obvious, just an old left-wing socialist of the Eastern European style of old, and he will do everything to support the Labor Party—particularly the left wing of the Labor Party—to destroy this country. I do not say that about all members of the Greens political party. I happen to know that there are a couple in the party—for example, Senator Siewert; I do not want to embarrass her—who are genuine environmentalists, who believe in what the Greens originally stood for. I know that Senator Siewert, from her body language, is as embarrassed as I am at times by the way that her leader carries on with an approach to his policy considerations that is based on an absolute hatred of the Liberal Party.