Lee Rhiannon (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Xenophon is really wide of the mark. My colleagues have set out clearly why this motion is designed to kill off the debate. We know how this will be taken out to the public. The left of Labor can get out there and say: 'We fought the good fight. We tried to deliver on this but, look, we went down.' And the right can say that they have also had a victory: they stopped it. In terms of the debate continuing in this place, for the moment it has been killed off.

Yes, this issue will come back but the way that it has been played out over these last few days has really been quite shameful. As Senator Sarah Hanson-Young pointed out, the failure of the opposition leader and the Prime Minister to come into the House of Representatives and provide an explanation is quite extraordinary when there has been so much build-up about this issue. We know that the majority of Australians are behind it. The least that they could have done was to afford it the dignity of the parliamentary process itself, as well as respecting the public and giving them their viewpoint. The failure to do that does reflect on them enormously.

This motion is apparently designed to allow everybody to speak—and, yes, obviously we support that—but at the end of the day the intent here is to have the vote, and then it is all over. It is exactly what happened in the House of Representatives. It is a repeat performance of the disgraceful way in which it was played out last night. It is also worth putting on the record: when have we ever seen the same piece of legislation introduced into the House of Representatives and into the Senate at the same time? Again, that was orchestrated effectively to be on the same day in order to minimise the whole thing, to shut it down and then both sides could say: 'Yes, we went in there. We fought the good fight on this issue, but no result.'

The Greens are in this for the long term. We will be working with the community. This issue will be back here before too long, and then we can all enjoy the same-sex marriages of our colleagues.