Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, and I appreciate any reminders that you would like to throw my way, Mr President. But I will conclude in 14 minutes and 23 seconds, Mr President. What we have is an opportunity for natural justice, through senators' statements, that will be denied, absolutely denied, if we are to remove them today. I would point out also, Mr President, that we have only two more sitting weeks after this and that we have been denied another day of debate tomorrow because of Senate estimates. We have only two more sitting weeks. There are some 76 senators in this chamber, all of whom may seek to offer accolades to Senator Moore—they may do; I am not sure about that. Perhaps some of her own team might not do that, but certainly on this occasion I would be. So there is no opportunity in senators' statements time for all 76 of us to make that contribution, unless it were less than a minute each. And let me tell you, Mr President: my acknowledgement and recognition of the contribution that Senator Moore has made to public life in the last week would go for much more than a minute or two.

It is more poignantly brought home to me because the day that this grievous offence was supposedly taking place, the day that Mr Tim Watts MP was attacking me and beating me up on Twitter for some alleged statements, was my birthday. Can you imagine what a terrible, terrible birthday gift that was, to wake up to these sorts of slurs and think, 'Gosh, I spent my birthday dealing with a very important subject and now I'm being attacked and harangued by the fools on Twitter and some of their supporters'? That is why the greatest gift I got for my birthday this year—apart from the one my wife gave me, of course—was the gift of honesty from Senator Moore. A more generous senator I do not think we could ask for, and so that is why it is unfair for Senator Moore to deny herself that moment in the spotlight, where someone can say thank you—thank you, thank you, thank you. And yet, by some quirk of fate, my surprise plan of thanks has been quashed by the person who was going to be on the receiving end of it. I would say to you, Mr President, that Senator Moore was blissfully unaware of what was coming in senators' statements today—blissfully unaware. She probably would not have been in the chamber because it would have made her blush, so gushing was my praise. But I would invite Senator Moore, in the 11 minutes and 37 seconds in which I conclude, to perhaps reconsider her motion and maybe withdraw it just so that justice can be done.

I made the point before that we still have a couple more sitting weeks, but there is only finite time in which to deal with senators' statements. But, as was so rightly pointed out by Senator Cormann, the Minister for Finance—a person who, I think, has been doing an outstanding job on behalf of the government—there is plenty of opportunity for this to be debated and discussed, this disallowance motion of this FoFA deregulation, in the following week. The disallowance has to be dealt with by 27 November—I think that was the date that he said. If there is an opportunity for us to deal with the FoFA disallowance motion in the following week, that would also allow for further consultation for those who are perhaps uninformed about the consequences of what they are doing—the full implications of it—then I think we should heed that wise advice.

A secondary benefit of that, of course—a secondary benefit, but no less important to me—is that it would allow me to acknowledge publicly the support of a senator who saw a grave injustice being done, and that is Senator Claire Moore. I mean, she is a true champion of truth and honesty I hope. I would say to Senator Moore: she is not very successful at points of order on relevance in question time, but she is extraordinarily successful at cutting through the progressive baloney that attacks a conservative senator simply because he is who he is. I think that Senator Moore needs to be paid tribute to—