Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

You are giving them exactly what they want, Senator Polley. What we need to do is actually get on with being a real opposition. Like I said yesterday: go out and sell negative gearing and capital gains tax abolition. I would back you 100 per cent on that; my party do too. We have long campaigned on this. These are the kinds of reforms we need to be focusing on with the Australian people. We need to be making sure this government does not cut funding to the CSIRO and the best climate scientists in the world when it is most desperately needed now. It will absolutely devastate the community, Senator Urquhart and Senator Polley, where we come from in Tasmania. These are the things that actually really matter.

We need to be out there making sure one thing happens—that is, at the next election we can get a democratic result that gets rid of this government. The longer you spend throwing mud and playing student politics in this chamber the less chance we have of beating the coalition at the next election. So I would ask the Labor Party here today to go back and have a look, from a few years ago, at your support for Senate voting reform and ask yourself why you are really not getting behind this now. We know there has been significant conflict within the Labor Party over this. It has been in the papers. We know that you are very conflicted on this, like you are on lots of things. But if you do not stand for something, you will fall for anything. That is the most important thing to me here: you stand for absolutely nothing and you certainly do not stand for democracy if you do not support Senate voting reform. That is what this is.

Senator Williams was right the other day when he yelled to the roof in the Senate the other day in exasperation—which was disorderly, I must say, Deputy President—and said, 'You hate democracy.' It is actually not a bad statement because that is actually this is about. This is about getting democratic voting reform. I am proud to be a member of a political party. Senator Rhiannon, who is in the chamber with us today, got this reform into the New South Wales upper house, where it has been very well received. I have spoken to her and she said that it was very difficult then too; the same kind of thing occurred, the same kind of base political debate, but it has been a good reform. Now we have a chance to get a good reform here in the Senate. It will be something that we can look back on as a legacy.

Senator Cameron came in here a few weeks ago and was having a go at the Greens and said that we are no good at negotiating, we are not hard enough negotiators, we got rolled on tax avoidance, we got rolled on pensions. Apart from the fact that we actually got really good results for the Australian people, I think Senator Cameron's point is actually quite important in this debate. The strength of the Labor Party and those individuals in the Labor Party who are leading this charge against Senate voting reform—Senator Dastyari, Senator Conroy and Senator Wong, and probably Senator Cameron himself—are good at doing backroom deals. They are hard negotiators. They have enjoyed working with this crossbench, as I have. This is actually about their power. This is about their influence. This is not about doing the right thing by the Australian people and actually giving our children a more democratic future by allowing them to dictate where their votes go in any election and stopping undemocratic backroom deals that do not reflect the will of the Australian people.

If it takes the Greens to be the political party in parliament who have to be the real opposition, who have to have a spine, who have to stay true to their principles, who have to represent a grassroots movement of people who want to see participative democracy, who want to see peace, nonviolence and justice—all the things that my party hold dear—then I am proud to be part of that group that stands in the Senate and has strong principles.

Senator Polley interjecting—

If you do not stand for something you will fall for anything, Senator Polley, and I am very disappointed that the Labor Party have taken a short-term, populist and highly destructive, disingenuous and dangerous approach to undermining what will be— (Time expired)