Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak briefly in support of this motion which the Greens have co-sponsored. One of the ways in which the government of the day, no matter who is in charge, tries to deal with the power of the Greens and the crossbench is to diminish our resourcing. It is a very convenient way of thumbing their noses at the one-third of the country that voted for the Greens or an Independent. It serves the interests of the two big parties very nicely to have it difficult for us to get the drafting support we need to fix their weak legislation.

We hope for a time when there is a government with courage to draft legislation that does address the problems that people are facing—the genuine cost-of-living crisis, the crisis the planet is in. We hope one day there will be a government that will have the guts to do what is necessary to meet the scale of the challenges but, at the moment, unfortunately, we don't have that. That is why the influence of the Greens and the crossbench is so crucial, because we bring those interests of the community to this chamber and we demand better from the government of the day.

When the drafters say, 'We're sorry but we're slammed, there's not enough of us to do the work you need us to do, because the government haven't given us the staff to do the work,' it's not their fault; it is the fault of the government for not hiring enough people to do the work to help the Greens and the crossbench fix the government's weak legislation.

That's why we're supporting this motion today. It'll be very interesting to see how the government deals with this. I don't have very high hopes, because, frankly, they're very threatened by the rise of the Greens and the independents, and there's a reason why the vote for the two big parties is going down.