Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Unfortunately, this is yet another example of the culture war that the Senate has become for the extremes of the political debate, being the far right of the LNP on the one hand and the far left of the Greens on the other hand. Last week we saw it with the Greens moving their culture war motions, and now we have the LNP doing the same thing. The only people who lose out of this and the only victims in this are coal communities and coalmining workers. We know that it is the LNP that has condemned coalmining workers to poor mining safety, casualisation and labour hire. They are keeping their living standards low. And we know that it's the Greens who want to shut down all coalmining, denying those communities of their livelihoods as well. These issues are important. They deserve better than stunt motions from both extremes of parliament. We don't support unlawful protests, but we do recognise a role for civil disobedience. That's why we ask that the motion be split.