Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of this suspension of standing orders. The reason is, of course, that we have asked the government to release the much-relied-upon legal advice. We're about to leave this chamber. Parliament's about to rise in some 2½ hours. There won't be an opportunity for votes. People are going to be getting back on their planes and going home for two weeks. Meanwhile, we have a Deputy Prime Minister who is apparently both an Australian citizen and a New Zealand citizen and therefore not eligible to be in the parliament, according to the Constitution.

When we talk about timeliness and we talk about the seriousness of this issue, cry me a river from the government when they want to complain that we've just sprung this upon them. All week the government have said that they rely on this legal advice from the Solicitor-General and that we should all just trust them. The Australian people are sick and tired of just being told, 'Trust us,' by the Turnbull government. I can tell them: they do not trust you. They do not trust you!

Only weeks ago, the member for New England, Barnaby Joyce, said there were no problems, that he'd done all the paperwork. His office phoned up and told a journalist, 'Everything's A-OK, mate.' It turns out that it wasn't. They asked the Australian people to trust them, and they blew it. He's not fit to be in the government, on the front bench as a minister, let alone—