Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That leave of absence be granted to Senators Carr, Farrell and Wong today, on account of ministerial duties.

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that that motion be agreed to.

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

Mr Deputy President, I ask if the senator who has moved this motion would go beyond just saying 'ministerial duties'. This is a sitting of the Senate. We have important matters before us. It is about to be followed by a motion requesting leave of absence for an equal number of members of the opposition. I believe the Senate is owed an explanation that is explicit about the need to put the Senate sitting second to the activities of the seven senators we are about to be asked to give leave to.

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Brown, there is a motion before the chair. The Senate will decide. The question is that that motion moved by Senator McEwen be agreed to.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On a point of order, Mr Deputy President: is there no opportunity to discuss this motion?

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No. The motion has been taken as formal. Permission was given by the Senate for the motion to be taken as formal. I have now put the motion. So you are debating the point but there is no further discussion.

Question agreed to.

Helen Kroger (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That leave of absence be granted to the following senators:

  (a) Senator Cormann for today, on account of parliamentary business;

  (b) Senator Payne for today, for personal reasons; and

  (c) Senator Heffernan for today, for personal reasons.

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

We have got a request for Senator Cormann to be absent from this sitting of the Senate, for parliamentary—

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, on a point of order—

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just a moment, Senator Macdonald. Do you have a point of order, Senator Brown?

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

No, I am speaking to that motion.

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are speaking to the motion?

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

I am; that is correct.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, on a point of order: leave was granted for it to be a formal motion.

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are not in formal business but leave was granted for the motion to be moved. Senator Brown is now debating the motion. Is that correct, Senator Brown?

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

Yes, that is right.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On a point of order, Mr Deputy President: it is the exact point I made in relation to the previous motion, and I was told that it was a formal motion, that leave had been given to deal with it as a formal motion. I was told I could not speak on it. Now we are having the exact same motion with a different ruling.

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are correct, Senator Macdonald, and it is my error for calling that incorrectly to you in the first instance. However, it has been the tradition of the Senate that when these motions are moved they are treated as formal motions even though we are not in formal business. Leave was sought for a motion to be moved, and that is how they have normally been dealt with. If Senator Brown now wishes to debate the motion, as will be your entitlement, he can do so. I have called Senator Brown. He has the call.

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

Thank you, Mr Deputy President. I am pleased to be making a precedent here.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You've made a lot of precedents, Bob—1.6 million of them.

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

Yes, I have. What we have is seven senators from the major parties missing from a Senate sitting which is to deal with important matters—

Opposition senators interjecting—

yes, six, as somebody has dropped off the list—without due explanation except it is on parliamentary business, personal business or ministerial business.

Honourable senators interjecting—

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He's pre-prepared it and he's adjusting his speech to what's actually occurred.

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

Senator Abetz objects, but he has got an opportunity to speak here. I think it is more than a courtesy. It is a matter of public interest as to why six or seven senators from the major parties should be missing from this last day of sitting of the Senate. They should be here unless there is some cogent reason—

Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On a point of order, Mr Deputy President, I think that Senator Brown is very close to misleading the Senate. This is not the last day of the sitting of the Senate. The last scheduled sitting day of the Senate is Wednesday next week.

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order.

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

There is no point of order. I can see that Senator Abetz has gone Dickensian and I suppose that suits him. I am making a very logical and reasonable point here on behalf of the voters of Australia and the importance of the parliament and, not least, the importance of the sittings of the Senate. There is large-scale absenteeism of frontbenchers of both sides showing up here. This sitting is not sudden; we have all known about it for quite some time. The voters of Australia deserve to have a better explanation.

Of course, if there is a family illness or a major occasion which requires a senator to be absent, or a ministerial requirement which is beyond that of the requirement for a senator to be present in the chamber, or if there is a parliamentary duty which is more important than the sitting of the Senate, then let us hear what it is.

Of course Senator Abetz would call this a stunt, but I am serious about it and I think the Senate is owed a better explanation than a one-word adjective to say why a senator is away. It is a legion of absenteeism on the last day of the sitting of the Senate and the big parties should do better than that.

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The duplicity dripping out of that Pecksniffian pocket of the Senate is just sickening. Here we have the Australian Greens combining in their alliance with the ALP to shut down this parliament three days early. Three days early they have combined with the ALP to guillotine through 20 bills by the end of the day without a single word having been spoken on those bills. And the reason for the guillotine, the reason for this abuse of parliamentary process and the abrogation of parliamentary duty by Senator Brown, the Australian Greens and the ALP, is that they do not want to sit the extra three days that have been on the parliamentary calendar since day one. Why is that? It is because Senator Brown and Senator Milne want to scuttle out of this place to go to Durban. They are the absentees, and what they are now putting up before this place is a ruse to suggest that somehow there are absentees from both sides to cover up for the fact that they have deliberately forced the government not to sit next week for those three days so that they can scuttle off to Durban and be absentees—the whole lot of them—for a full three days!

It has been accepted practice—and I will not delay the Senate much longer—that people are granted leave of absence in circumstances where the whips believe it appropriate and in circumstances where we do not seek to inquire into each other's business.

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

You don't inquire into ministerial or parliamentary business?

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Brown foolishly interjects, and of course whenever anybody interjects on Senator Brown, what does he do? He puts out his hands, Messiah-like, and says, 'Chair, will you protect me from these interjections?' This is the sort of Pecksniffian attitude we get from Senator Brown day after day after day in this place, and we are getting sick and tired of it.

It is the accepted practice in this place that we do not have to divulge matters that may be of a personal nature or, indeed, the nature of ministerial business. Much as we on the opposition would like to know the detail of it, we believe that it is inappropriate to make those sorts of inquiries of each other. If the Greens were ever to be in a position to require leave of absence—and I am sure that it has occurred in the past—we do not go inquiring into that sort of detail.

But the real reason that Senator Brown is now trying to make an issue out of this is that he knows that later on today he will be voting with the ALP to give himself and the Australian Greens not just one day's leave of absence, but the whole nine Greens will get leave of absence for a full three days. It was a good try, Senator Brown, but we have seen through the ruse, and now let us get on with the business of the Senate.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I did not want to delay the opportunity for the opposition to be able to debate bills later on this morning. I just want to inject a little sense in this debate. These are ordinary notices of motions that go through to give senators leave for both personal reasons and parliamentary business. They are generally not debated. Why? Everyone from the opposition, the government and the cross-benchers will at some point seek the same result; they will ask for leave of parliament for private or personal business or for parliamentary business and it will be granted without debate. We all know in this place that there are reasons for people to undertake that and it is not undertaken lightly. People do have to convince their own side that they do have work that will take them away. Leave of absence is certainly not handed out easily. From my perspective, I do not allow senators or the whip to go easily out of this place. This is where they should be, doing their business. However, there are circumstances that will warrant that.

I am not about to set any precedent here. I think we should be very careful about that because we will not be able to live easily with the precedent we set. With those short words I would encourage people to draw a breath and realise that this is an ordinary issue that occurs on many days that the Senate sits.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Regrettably, we have already passed without discussion the motion giving leave to the Leader of the Government in the Senate—

Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Minister for Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He has not been given leave; it was the deputy, not the leader.

Senator McEwen interjecting—

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I can only go by the Order of Business. You tell me that Senator Evans is here. Therefore we have Senator Carr, a very senior minister; Senator Wong, a very senior minister; and Senator Farrell, who is no doubt somewhere organising another leadership coup in the Labor Party. Three very senior members of the government choose to absent themselves on the last day of sitting—I beg my own pardon, it is not the last day of sitting. The last day of sitting is next Wednesday.

I want the people of Australia who are listening to this debate to understand that for almost nine months the Senate has agreed to sit next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Were we to do that, we would not have needed to guillotine through some 20 bills without a word being spoken on them—not a word in favour of them nor a word opposed to them. I think the people of Australia, and there are many who do listen to these debates, need to understand that the Greens and the Labor Party combined to guillotine through in excess of a dozen bills without a word being spoken on them. They also guillotined through perhaps the most complex parcel of bills that this parliament has seen in the last decade; they were the carbon tax bills, the bills based upon a promise by the Prime Minister that she would never introduce a carbon tax. She then introduced a carbon tax with 18 complex bills, which were guillotined through this chamber without proper debate. And we are already seeing that those bills are suffering because they were not subject to parliamentary scrutiny. We are already finding, by reports from around the globe, that these pieces of legislation on the carbon tax have suffered because they were not properly considered in this chamber. The whole carbon tax issue will become a farce at Durban next week when the United States, China, Japan, Korea, Russia and India indicate that they are not going to have a $23-a-tonne tax on their particular emissions of carbon dioxide.

I am very angry about the guillotining—about the dealing of these bills without any discussion whatsoever, and I think the people of Australia expect better than that of this parliament, and particularly the Senate, which has a reputation for scrutiny. We have a very extensive committee system, and the people like that because they understand that the Senate does expose difficulties with government legislation.

We have three senior ministers leaving this parliament four days before the parliamentary year concludes. The Labor Party stands condemned and the Greens political party, which have made a virtue over decades of allowing parliamentary scrutiny, of allowing people to have their say, even if they disagree with them, have joined with the Labor Party in curtailing debate on important bills, and particularly the carbon tax bills. It is outrageous that ministers should be given leave four days before the parliamentary year concludes. If Senator Abetz has suggested—I am not aware of this; I do not think I have seen it on the Order of Businessthe Greens political party are going to agree to the Senate rising today so that they can go to Durban, then this is an absolute disgrace. It should allow GetUp! and all of those other fringe groups that support the Greens political party to understand what a mob of frauds are those who occupy the benches of the Greens political party.

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

Mr Deputy President, I ask that that unparliamentary remark about a group of senators be withdrawn.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I withdraw. People like GetUp! and those other fringe groups that support the Greens, people like Mr Graeme Wood, who donated $1.6 million to Senator Bob Brown and then had Senator Brown asking questions in the parliament that would seem, on face value, to relate to different benefits to—

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Macdonald, could I just draw your attention to the question before the chair.

Senator Bob Brown interjecting—

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes. It is about leave being given to leave this parliament four days early. And I know Senator Bob Brown does not like this. I hear him interjecting. When anyone else interjects he is first on his feet. Again, it shows the different standards this man has for himself as opposed to anyone else. It is okay for him to interject, but if anyone else does it, 'Oh, please Mr Deputy President, protect me.' But he does not mind it himself. If Senator Brown is, as Senator Abetz suggests, going to join with the Labor Party and shut this chamber down three days early so that he can go for a jaunt to South Africa then that needs to be condemned. I want to say that the people who have in the past supported the Greens for what they thought was their principled approach to parliament should now understand that there is nothing principled about the Greens political party. They will on the one hand rail against leave being given to ministers and, on the other hand, vote so that this parliament stops three days early so they can go on a—

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Brown, do you have a point of order?

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

With respect to part of this rant: I have no plans for a jaunt to South Africa—

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is not a point of order.

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

No, but I have made the point.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, you're getting blamed for it—you may as well!

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I hear Senator Sterle interjecting. Senator Sterle, you should be out helping Tony Sheldon get rid of your leader; you know, the dead corpse that—

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Through the chair, Senator Macdonald.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is one thing I agree on with Tony Sheldon! I do not want to delay the Senate from the debate before it, but it is important that the thousands of people listening to or watching this debate today—

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

No-one is listening to you!

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Hanson-Young, have a look at your emails when you get back. You will find that—

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Macdonald, address your remarks through the chair.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy President. Senator Hanson-Young will find that people do actually take an interest in democracy—and, increasingly, the emails coming through to me are saying how hypocritical the Greens political party are. On the one hand, this morning, they were railing against leave being given to go away and, on the other hand, voting with the Australian Labor Party to shut down this parliament three days early so that they can go on a jaunt to South Africa. I think that is hypocrisy in the extreme on the part of the Greens political party. Their retribution will come at the next election. If they had any principles they would vote with the opposition to facilitate an early election so the people of Australia can have a view on the carbon tax bills and on the Labor Party's propensity to ram bills through this parliament without debate.

Question agreed to.