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

Senator Lambie is seeking to suspend so much of standing orders as would prevent her from tabling certain documents. The Australian Greens have been provided with these documents, but it was literally within the last two minutes that we were provided these documents by Senator Lambie. There are numerous documents in the bundle that Senator Lambie would like to table, and many of those documents are very lengthy. I haven't had a chance to count the pages, but I wouldn't hazard a guess that there are hundreds of pages of documents here.

The Australian Greens take a very generous view on tabling documents, but we do have a threshold, and that is that we will support the tabling of documents if we believe it is in the public interest for those documents to be tabled. We apply that threshold with a very generous view because we genuinely believe in transparency. I want to place on the record that Senator Shoebridge has worked very closely across the aisle with Senator Lambie on matters associated with the ADF leadership, and that constructive relationship, I have no doubt, will continue. We thank Senator Lambie for, within the last couple of minutes, providing us with those documents; however, we have not had enough time to satisfy ourselves that tabling these documents is in fact in the public interest. So we're not going to support this suspension right now, but I do say to Senator Lambie that we're very happy to engage constructively with her and very happy to work with her to deliver on the things that she is trying to achieve in this space. The Greens have expressed many similar and, in some cases, identical views to Senator Lambie about matters associated with the ADF—in particular, senior leadership in the ADF. We are absolutely committed to continuing that close working relationship with Senator Lambie and to prosecute the issues that need to be prosecuted in the space. So even though we can't support the suspension right here, I place it on the record that we will engage with Senator Lambie. Now that we have received those documents, we will engage with Senator Lambie and work with her on those issues.