Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

This goes directly to the bill and the amendments, because this is about democracy. We have had all these pious lectures about democracy from the Greens tonight, and every time there was any criticism of Senator Di Natale he said, 'I wasn't going to get up, but my glass jaw is a little bit fractured. I had better get up and make a contribution,' and up he got again. Now and then in this place you have to have a bit of a thick hide, a bit of thick skin, but he even had to react to Senator Conroy and others having a go at his photo shoot. He even had to react to that. I thought that was not a good look—either in the photo shoot or tonight. I do not think either was a good look. Anyway, he had to do that—again, a bit of a sign of weakness in relation to that issue.

There are a load of amendments that we have to deal with, and I am sure every time we get up and talk about the amendments, we will have some discussion about how this is a great thing for democracy. Other people have different views, both inside and outside parliament, about whether this will actually lead to a better democracy in this country. I am inclined to see this in a fairly simple position. The Greens have seen an opportunity to make sure that no-one else can do what they have done as a party. They have got in their with small amounts of votes and all these other feeder parties feeding in to give them an opportunity to get in. Vote for the feeder party and you are really voting for Senator Rhiannon—that was when she was in the upper house in New South Wales. These are the problems that we face with the Greens. They really are, now, just a small political machine that wants to stay there and does not want anyone else to actually get into parliament. No-one else gets an opportunity to get in. I think Senator Xenophon is running on the same view. Senator Xenophon is going to do pretty well out of this. He is a smart politician: He has seen an opportunity and he has moved in.

This is really not about democracy unless you deal with those two issues that I raised earlier. If you want to have real democracy in this country, you will deal with the issue of lobbyists and the rorting that goes on by the Liberal and National parties with political donations.

I want to go back to what was said earlier. You can have above-the-line voting or below-the-line voting, you can do all that stuff, but what Michael Kroger says is that he is going to have a loose arrangement with the Greens. Michael Kroger came out and belled the cat. In New South Wales recently, in the election before last, I saw how the Greens refused to give preferences to a good, progressive woman candidate in the Blue Mountains, and for nearly four years we had one of the most, right-wing, incompetent—

Senator Rhiannon interjecting—

The Greens are all yapping. They cannot accept the reality of what happens.