Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

But I thought that being a major party—in fact, they are larger than the National Party—they would be here every moment that the parliament was sitting. Oh, dear! Anyway, the reason I am revisiting this is that Senator Di Natale took issue at being referred to as the 'senator for half measures'. Senator Di Natale took issue with that and also said, 'The agreement is what the agreement is.' We now know from Mathias Cormann that he is right. We now know from the government that there is no written record of exactly what is agreed. There is nothing. I had the parliamentary 101 yesterday. Now, I want to go to a deal making 101. Senator Rhiannon has spent ages talking about how the Labor Party is only doing this because it protects backroom operators and that the backroom operators want to do X, Y or Z. I think it would be a long stretch for anyone to characterise me as a backroom operator. I know that some people have accused me of being new to this debate, yet I have been the spokesperson for the shadow special minister of state in the Senate for quite a while.

But let's go to deal making 101: look at the written record of the deal. The good thing is: when you have a written record of the deal, some years later when there is a new leader of the Greens—rather than the leader who dealt with it quite sensibly at the time, and who was probably less naive—you are able to dispute spurious claims about what those deals were. The first aspect of that, item 3 of this deal—the agreement between the Australian Greens and the Australian Labor Party; fully transparent—talks about goals. It does not talk about commitments in the same way as Senator Di Natale suggests. I suggest that he also goes back and looks at the actual agreement. The dispute that we were having earlier in the day related to provisions in the bill. But if I go to, for example, point 3(d):

d) The Parties note that Senator Bob Brown will reintroduce as a Private Members Bill the Commonwealth Electoral (Above‐the‐Line Voting) Amendment Bill 2008. The ALP will consider the Bill and work with the Greens to reach reforms satisfactory to the Parties.

The Labor Party did do that. But this is not the ironclad commitment that Senator Di Natale seems to suggest existed.

Let me refer to another element of the agreement because, again, he misrepresented that—or, in fact the Greens have misrepresented that—but I think my other colleagues in the debate that just concluded have highlighted some of this earlier. Again, it is 101 in deal making. Point (e) of that agreements says:

e) Refer issues of public interest disclosure, where the Senate or House votes on the floor against the decision of a Minister, to the Information Commissioner, who will arbitrate …

No—sorry—that is the wrong one. I want to go to the issues from the earlier debate about political donations.

Again, in the short moment I have here I cannot find that exact provision. But it was not that unequivocal commitment, and the history that has been outlined here highlights the point also that the real reason we got nowhere on political donations was because of the behaviour of the now government.