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

I appreciate interjections from Senator Hanson-Young. I would just like her to explain why it is so bad to guillotine legislation when you want to say something about a particular matter, yet when the majority of this chamber, in a party sense, wants to fully discuss bills that will add to everybody's cost of living you join with the Labor Party and guillotine the bills. It is typical of the hypocrisy and duplicity of a party which has no principles and no relevant policies, and which is stuck in the past of the communist revolution in the USSR.

Honourable senators interjecting—

Senator Hanson-Young laughs at that: perhaps she should go and ask her colleague Senator Rhiannon about the Communist Party of Russia. One thing I always say about Senator Rhiannon: she is true to her cause. She does not try to hide the fact that she admires the communist cause and that she has been a very active member of one of the groups supporting the Communist Party of Australia—or was it the other Communist Party? I am not quite sure. I disagree with Senator Rhiannon on most things, but I admire her because she sticks to her convictions and does not try, like the rest of the Greens Party, to be one thing to the public—that is, the cuddly koala party—but in fact be a social change party to take us all to the ultimate nanny state, where they and the Labor Party know better what suits me and my family than I and my family do.