Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Just to follow on from Senator McAllister's contribution, it is the submission of the Australian Greens that Senator McAllister is entirely accurate in what she has just put forward as a rationale for what has just happened, and we collectively join with Senator McAllister and the Labor Party in expressing our utter astonishment that the government would actually vote against the progression of its own legislation through this Senate. I don't know whether this has ever happened before and I'd be very interested to find out. It's certainly not something that I've witnessed either in the Senate or in my many, many years in the Tasmanian parliament. The government has actually voted against the progress of its own bill in order to allow Senator Hanson to move her amendments.

I want to be very clear: when Senator McAllister was putting to the chamber her theory about what just happened, Senator Hanson agreed with it and said that Senator McAllister was quite right in the assertions that she was making. So there it is: this is simply the result of a dirty deal done between the government and One Nation, and it has resulted in the most bizarre situation where the government has, astoundingly, decided that it should vote against the progress of its own legislation through this place.

We will now wait and see how this shakes out and how the government votes on Senator Hanson's amendments. I want to be clear, though: these are not crossbench amendments; these are One Nation amendments. They will be not be supported by the Australian Greens. Again, this is Alice in Wonderland stuff from the government here, which just, potentially, historically voted against the passage of its own legislation through this Senate.