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

Well, here we go again! Is there any topic that is not safe from a Greens stunt? We see it over and over again. We see it on climate change issues, we see it on refugee issues, and now the Greens are willing to stoop so low that they will pull a stunt around very serious issues involving the sexual harassment of female employees in this building.

As many speakers from all sides, including Labor, have made clear over the last couple of days in particular, these are extremely serious issues that need to be dealt with seriously. Labor have taken various steps on these matters within our party. We're told the government has. I don't know what the Greens have been up to as we know they've got issues they haven't dealt with properly. But rather than deal with those issues seriously, what the Greens do is revert to type and think, 'How can we pull a stunt that supplies our next meme material?' That's all they care about; the meme will be going out right about now, I'd say. Rather than actually deal with these issues, they pull another stunt. They told the opposition about this stunt about two minutes before they pulled it. That's how serious the Greens are about dealing with these issues properly.

If the Greens were serious and genuine about trying to deal with these issues, don't you think they'd come and talk to people whose votes they knew they needed more than two minutes before they pulled it? But that wasn't what this was about. This was about gaining half an hour to speak so that they could all cut their little social media videos and pump them out into every inner-city location around Australia, being the only locations around Australia they actually care about. It was all a platform for more Greens grandstanding, more Greens stunts, rather than taking the serious action that needs to be taken in relation to these issues.

Labor's support for a national integrity commission is well known, has been in place for a number of years now, and we are disappointed that the government hasn't taken action on this. But I think to try to use a national integrity commission as part of a stunt around sexual harassment issues tells you all you need to know about what the Greens are really about. They are not sincere, they are all about stunts, they are not serious. (Time expired)