Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

No, Doug, not you. No, Senator Cameron, not you. But Senator Muir is probably the most normal Australian to have been elected to this chamber in a long time. I would have preferred a third Labor senator—apologies, Senator Muir—but I do not find it a disgrace that Senator Muir got elected. I accept there is some criticism of the voting system that could have been reformed without ever coming to a position where a normal person like Senator Muir could never get elected to this parliament. The Greens are perpetrating this atrocity. This absolute travesty of democracy, where they devised a system where 3.4 million Australians will have no say about the make-up of this chamber, is an absolute disgrace.

I am frustrated. I keep seeing members of parliament and senators saying they are sad about what has happened and about the Labor Party position. Let me say again: I am sad that 3.4 million Australians are going to be locked out of representation. What is really sad is the dishonesty. I have sat as national secretaries, federal directors or senior politicians have said, 'We don't know what's going to happen as a result of these reforms.' The national secretary—or the equivalent, the federal director—of the Liberal Party does not know what is going to happen! Senior frontbenchers say, 'Oh, I don't know what's going to happen; it's the will of the people.' How dishonest can you be? Everybody else has stood up and said this bill is designed to eradicate the crossbenchers. I do not know how much blunter it could be. You should have just written 'eradication of crossbench senators' as the title of the bill. You could not be more obvious. You could not be more blatant.

Then you have some of the key people like Senator Rhiannon and some of the key people who have been on the parliamentary committee—senior figures who have spent their entire lives maximising the vote for their party—who say, 'I have no idea what the outcome of this is going to be.' Even key, important commentators have been dishonest in their representation of what this particular alleged reform will do in terms of the outcome. The only thing that came out of that farce of a parliamentary inquiry that the Greens and the government foisted on us was that finally Antony Green was forced to confess that, yes, there was a strong chance that the coalition could get 38 or more seats in a double-D or a half-Senate election. He finally confessed it. I looked at it for 30 seconds when I saw the first proposal and said, 'This can deliver 38 senators for the coalition and 12 senators for the Greens.'

They know it. They just do not want to admit it, because then it will be seen for what it is: a rort that is about denying the opportunity for ordinary Australians to get elected to parliament. It is a total rort. It is not a reform; it is a bill where the Greens say: 'We're pulling up the drawbridge. We're sick of those nasty minor parties that won't give us any preferences because they don't agree with us.' Watching Senator Rhiannon attack Glenn Druery at the committee was comical, as they traded blows about what happened in the year 2000 and why you would not give us preferences in this year and what happened in this state election. Goodness me! What a tantrum from the Greens. What a tantrum from Senator Xenophon. What a sense of entitlement.

That is the thing I really find offensive about the position being advocated by the Greens: they pretend that it is not going to get them more senators in a half-Senate election—so don't let them come back in here and say, 'Oh, one minute you're saying you're winning and one minute you're saying we're losing.' There are two very different scenarios. The fact they were too stupid to work out the government were actually planning a double-D to use the new legislation is a matter for the black Wiggle to explain to the people of Australia. I mean, seriously!

So I find extraordinary the sense of entitlement from those who are voting for this—that they are entitled to Senate positions. Senator Rhiannon is so offended by what happened in the last New South Wales Senate vote—the prospect that she might not win her seat. Oh, my goodness! We cannot possibly have a vote of the New South Wales people and make sure everyone's preferences are taken into account!

You have to admire it. Tony Abbott has left the prime ministership, but the spirit of the Abbott slogan lives on: 'We're going to give the people of Australia control of their preferences, because it's wrong the other way.' We will not tell them that 25 per cent of them will not be counted at all because they are going to exhaust. We will not tell them that what we are actually doing is introducing a radical package which will disenfranchise 25 per cent of Australians who I wish voted for the Labor Party but who do not vote for the Labor Party, the coalition, the Greens or Senator Xenophon. Apparently the way to fix that is to disenfranchise them.

Let us take away their rights to cast a preference below the line, 1 to however many, or to vote above the line. It is all about those nasty backroom deals. You are such hypocrites. I have spent years pseudonegotiating with your backroom boys through various committees. You have been in the preference deal arrangements for years. You yourself, Senator Rhiannon, have engaged in practices to get yourself elected into the New South Wales state election and the federal election. They are the very things you are now attacking. You are guiltier than Glenn Druery for your behaviour, the very behaviour you have been attacking, and you are now so mortified and opposed to. You have been engaging in it for years and you never thought it was wrong until all of a sudden, you worked out: 'Oh my goodness, no-one wants to give us a presence. The best way to fix that is to disenfranchise 25 per cent of Australians who vote in the Senate.' What a lousy argument.

But, no, we will just keep saying over and over again, Tony Abbott style: 'We've got to stop the backroom boys. We've got to stop the factional deals.' You have been in the middle of them. At least say backroom boys and girls, because you have been in the room. For goodness sake, what a hypocrite! I expect the coalition to always rort the system to try and make it as favourable to the coalition as possible. I expect that. I do not even bother to waste my breath on you. It is standard operating procedure—whatever we have to do to win, we will do—block supply, bring down the Prime minister and knock over any convention, all of it.

Government senators interjecting—

No. I am talking about one from the opposite party when they were Prime Minister and you were the opposition. It is 1975 I am talking about. Okay. Let us be clear. There is no convention to trust you to keep up. I respect that. I do not like it. I do not agree with it, but at least I am prepared to accept it is standard operating procedure.

Senator McGrath interjecting—

I know you would prefer me not to mention you. I know you are cheering me on, because she is not going to kick to the kerb. At 12 o'clock tomorrow they are going to kick you to the kerb. I am disgusted by you. They despise you. They are going to laugh all the way to the double-D and wave a couple of you goodbye. They will say, 'Well, you voted for it, idiots.'

It would be laughable if it was not so fundamentally wrong. I have seen a speech this morning that says, 'The only way the Libs can get 38 is if the people of Australia vote for it.' That is not true under this system. That is the point. Seventy-five per cent of people will vote for a particular main party and 25 per cent will get nothing. The 25 per cent will not have voted. Their votes would have been exhausted, cast aside and eliminated by this legislation, and that is what gives those opposite 38 in the future. That does it and not the way the people of Australia vote.

When those dishonest people give speeches saying the only way the Liberals and Nationals can get 38 is by the will of the people, that is not true. That is so dishonest from some people who spent their entire lives harvesting votes for the Labor Party that it beggars belief for the dishonesty that you could stand up in public and say that. And then, when you ask a serious question, what happens? You go, 'Oh, I don’t know.' How can you take someone seriously, who actually says, 'I am proposing this voting change and I don’t know what the outcome is,' when their spent their entire lives harvesting votes, doing preference deals, maximising the Labor Party's vote at every single election and then suddenly say, 'I don’t know what the outcome is going to be'?

Anyone who has a modicum of understanding of quota preferential voting fully understands the game, the scam and the rort being polled by those opposite and the Greens. You have put all political principle and your own platform aside for a filthy deal that you thought would get you 12 votes, 12 green bums on seats, because you are entitled to them. The people of Australia decide who comes here. There is no sense of entitlement. They do not owe us anything. If I get elected, I consider it an absolute privilege to be here. I do not believe I am entitled to be here, unlike those in that crossbench now, who think they are entitled to red leather under their bums. That is what this is about down that end of the—oh please!