Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Transparency, accountability, a willingness to discuss the ideas, the policies, which you believe to be best for the Australian nation—this is what the people of this country should be able to expect from their government. If they can't find it in their government, good God, they should be able to find it in their opposition, but both are absent on the field. This is a dirty, xenophobic deal, done in the dead of the night, attempting to sneak past the Australian people the reality that, under this legislation, migrants will be forced to go without access to Newstart for four years. What do the opposition propose that they do? How do they expect them to live? They have no answer, for the only reason they support this legislation is the $1.3 billion that they think they can pour into their election war chest to fight the government. They would take this money from this group in the full knowledge that they will face no electoral consequence at the ballot box, because these people can't vote. Shame on you!

There was a time when I considered myself a supporter of the Australian Labor Party, and it is on days like this that I am reminded of exactly why I could never put my name nor my vote to this organisation. The light in this place falls down upon the chamber, and you are revealed as spineless cowards who would sell out vulnerable people, who would attempt to sneak legislation that you are ashamed of past the Australian public in the dead of the night so that you can meet your election objectives and avoid a bad headline in the Murdoch press. You would condemn children, mothers and fathers, families, to poverty rather than confront this government.

This is not a decision you had to make; this is a decision you wanted to make. You weighed the lives and the security of migrant families—folks who come to this country seeking a better life, people who, from the moment they arrive, are required to pay taxes—against your own desire to roll out a campaign across Queensland and Western Sydney. You decided: 'Why the hell not? It won't come back to bite us. Nobody will notice. We'll move it through in 24 hours and nobody will be any the wiser.' I can tell you: they bloody well are. You ask, Senator Cameron—through you, Chair—whether anybody has let him know of the position upon which the Labor Party had taken—