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

I cannot believe that contribution go unchallenged, I am afraid. We have Senator Rhiannon come in here and say, 'Oh, let's try and explain to people out there, what's going on.' And then she tries to tell us here that we are on the third amendment. No!

Surely, Senator Rhiannon, if this is so important to you, you would address the amendments. You would know which amendment we are on, rather than try and give us some trite lecture about how you know better than anybody else and that the Labor Party has not been addressing the provisions in the bill.

We all know that the answers that we have been getting from the minster have been inadequate. That is why this process has taken so long. In fact, I would like to coin the most inadequate answer—the answers that senators referred to when they refer to the issues raised by Senator Wong, Senator Muir, Senator Day, Senator Lambie, Senator Carr, Senator Conroy and me. That area of questioning around whether it would be legal to promote a vote of 'vote 1 only' is actually the Rhiannon question—the question that Senator Rhiannon asked the AEC in the committee inquiry, and the AEC said to Senator Rhiannon, 'That's a question for the government.' We would have needed the department to answer a question of policy of that nature.

We have already seen that Senator Cormann misrepresented the committee inquiry. I had to point out to the chamber the Hansard record of that discussion, because he pretended that the AEC had actually attempted to answer that question, which was simply false. For you to come in here and lecture us at this hour and not even be on the right amendment is just a joke.