Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

Up until this point in time, you have not done so. You have been dragged kicking and screaming. The reality is that the motion before this place would not have occurred had Labor not proposed a universal disclosure regime. And the reason we had to do that is the very circumstances that have been reflected on in answers to questions today.

As Senator Wong made clear: when we found out that the then President of the Senate, with the knowledge of a cabinet minister, had sat on information that rendered him ineligible, this meant that this parliament could not be relied on to deal with these matters appropriately through its own usual processes and that we needed before us a more stringent procedure. I'm glad that we now have that, but you can certainly see, in the answers that have been given in this place this afternoon, how manifestly inadequate the government's response has been to the constitutional chaos that this parliament finds itself in. Senator Brandis, you said, back in August, that you thought former Senators Ludlam and Waters had acted a little prematurely, and perhaps you did indeed think that at the time. But it is apparent to all members in this place that, when the court found otherwise, you did nothing proactive to address this matter—until this point in time. The government has been entirely 'hear no evil, see no evil'. You have your own 'don't ask, don't tell' policy around these matters, where we see a Prime Minister who has refused to be apprised of the problem so that he can't be held accountable for it.

Question agreed to.