Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

Here I am, colleagues, with five minutes of unlooked-for opportunity to reflect upon the conduct of the Senate this week. I'm not sure what was funnier: Senator Babet's predictably weird contribution on modern Australian politics from the internet fringes or Senator Ciccone's 'egg-cellent' contribution about the very important contribution that egg production makes to the Australian chicken industry—no 'poultry' contribution at all! It is not a 'yolking' matter, the contribution that egg production makes for us.

The standing orders often try and restrain me from doing things, but I respect the standing orders, and I won't make a contribution about the two pieces of legislation that are before the Senate and the Australian parliament this week—the Future Made in Australia legislation and the Help to Buy legislation. I won't make a contribution about those two pieces of legislation except to say that it is the increasing pattern of this place that bills that are in the national interest are delayed and defied by a coalition that we see emerging here of the Greens political party and the Liberal and National parties.

There are genuine Australian progressives frustrated by what's happening in the world and concerned for the environment who voted for the Australian Greens in the Senate. That's their democratic right in our system. What they didn't realise was that, when they voted for the Greens, they got Peter Dutton. That's the result, now, of voting for the Greens political party. You vote for the Greens; you get Peter Dutton and Barnaby Joyce. There are well-meaning conservatives who can't break the habit of a lifetime and who have been voting Liberal or National their whole lives.