Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Look, the reason the Greens have put forward this motion for a comprehensive audit of all MPs is precisely because we can't rely on individual members of parliament coming forward and raising the questions themselves about their eligibility to stand in parliament. If the most recent episode with the Deputy Prime Minister, Barnaby Joyce, highlights anything, it highlights that we cannot rely on individuals to fess up. Indeed, it took pressure from some committed journalists within the media, and I do have to pay specific tribute to both Adam Gartrell and Amy Remeikis from the Fairfax papers, who pursued this. It was only after the Deputy Prime Minister was to be outed publicly that he made this acknowledgement. We need to have a comprehensive audit and we need to give some certainty to an issue that is creating great uncertainty in this parliament.