George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I have told you, Senator: because we think that there are more effective ways and more immediate ways to achieve the outcome that you seek. Your colleague Senator Doug Cameron, who is not a shy person by any manner of means, interjects that 'they will be flogging them with a wet lettuce'. Well, if it is a wet lettuce, Senator Cameron, you are one of the wet lettuces because we will be putting them in front of the entire parliament and we have begun to do so.

Senator Cameron, you may have no confidence in your capacity to pin witnesses down in parliamentary committee hearings. You may have no confidence in the capacity of your Labor colleagues both here and in the other place to put witnesses on the mat, but I have lots of confidence in the capacity of people such as Senator Ian Macdonald or Senator Linda Reynolds, for example, to pin witnesses down, to put them on the mat and to expose them if something needs to be exposed and to do it in real time. (Time expired)