Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to move a motion relating to the referral of a bill to a committee, as circulated.

Leave not granted.

Pursuant to contingent notice standing in the name of Senator Waters, I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent me from moving a motion to provide for the consideration of a matter, namely a motion to give precedence to a motion relating to the referral of a bill to a committee.

We are seeking to suspend standing orders today to bring forward a motion to ensure that in this place, here in the Senate, we can get to do our job properly. There's a piece of legislation that's about to be tabled in the House of Representatives that no-one has really seen—no-one has looked at the detail—and it has not been through a proper process, yet the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Peter Dutton, want to have it rammed through this place in under two days.

Why do they want to ram this piece of legislation through this chamber by the end of tomorrow? Because they are doing this under the cover of the federal budget, because it is a bill that guts environmental protection. It's a bill that will condemn wildlife in our country to extinction. It is a bill that will give loopholes to corporations to continue to pollute and trash our natural environment, no questions asked. It is a bill that fundamentally undermines any promises that this government has made to protect Australia's environment in this term of the parliament. It shows that this Labor government cannot be trusted to do the right thing when it comes to caring for and looking after our environment.

It shows that every time the Labor Party is under pressure from the big, foreign corporations who want to continue to trash, pollute and destroy, they go weak. They go weak because they don't have the guts to stand up to them and to stand up for the protection of our natural environment. How are they getting this done? They are entering into a stinking, rotten deal with Peter Dutton. The Liberal Party and the Labor Party are cuddling up together to do the bidding of the big, stinking, rotten corporations.