Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate—

(a)

notes Labor’s advertising attacking Liberal opponents in South Australia and the Greens in Tasmania using inferences of support for criminality; and

(b)

deplores this desperate tactic and calls on Labor to restore decency to its campaigning and to not mislead voters on the way to the elections on Saturday, 20 March 2010.

Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to make a brief statement.

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Leave is granted for two minutes.

Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We recognise that Senator Brown has the support of the coalition on this motion. He therefore has a majority in the chamber, and we will not call a division.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to make a brief statement.

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Leave is granted for two minutes.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is an important motion about decency in election advertising and about truth in election advertising. I am surprised that Labor and the government senators are not supporting it. It is true that the motion has its basis in Labor’s ads attacking the leader of the Liberal Party in South Australia, Isobel Redmond, who did not deserve to have an advertisement misleading voters about her integrity, and equivalent ads by Labor on the Greens in Tasmania, who likewise have been misrepresented. The important point here is not that Labor is again misrepresenting its opponents but that voters are being misled on their way to the ballot boxes on Saturday by these very nasty advertising tactics by Labor in both South Australia and Tasmania. I would have thought it was time that the government moved for decency and truth in political advertising, and I will have a further motion on that matter tomorrow.

Question agreed to.