Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

This schedule hands an incredible amount of power to a minister who simply does not deserve it. He has not earned it, he cannot be trusted with it, and we know what this minister does when he does not get things his own way. He holds children as hostages. That is what we have seen happen here tonight. That is what we have seen happen over the last few weeks.

Government senators interjecting—

I can see that I am agitating some of the people on the other side. They hate hearing the truth. They hate hearing that the person who is going to lead their party uses children as bargaining chips. They cannot stand the idea that the next leader of the Liberal government is going to be a man who is so drunk with power, so obsessed with his own authority that is prepared hold children as hostages just to get his own way. This schedule hands ultimate power to this minister and it is why it needs to be deleted.

If this chamber were to roll over on this schedule, we would effectively be saying we have no role in scrutinising regulation or legislation in this place. We know what this government does with legislation. We saw the crossbench having to fix it only a few weeks ago when it came to the FoFA laws. We know they cannot be trusted when it comes to legislation, and here we have the minister saying, 'You know we can't be trusted, so we're going to take away the total ability for you to fix it in the future.'