Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

We are here to debate whether Senator Abetz's proposition should take precedence over all other business, when the second item on the Notice Paper for today was the second reading debate on the Constitution Alteration (Local Government), during which he could have raised these matters if the coalition had not set up a filibuster on the EPBC Amendment Bill. That is why we are not going to support this. We will deal with these issues when we get to debate the local government referendum bill, which is the context in which we ought to deal with them.

I note with interest the outrage from Senator Brandis that the backroom deal that they had obviously done with the government on this matter has fallen to bits. I wonder if he got a letter that he could perhaps brandish to show how the agreement that was signed was so badly ratted upon, as occurred to the government only a few weeks ago. So I find it fascinating that there is such high dudgeon in relation to breached agreements when that is what happened over the last couple of weeks.

The Greens point of view is that we should continue with the bills which were agreed. We should have been onto the local government bills, but we have three other bills to deal with tonight. We shall deal with them and then deal with these matters when we get to the local government referendum bill.