2016-10-11
MR BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — Well, how about that? Labor finally get around to doing the right thing, and they are still doing it for entirely the wrong reasons. There has not been some great change of heart. There has not been some reconsideration. There has not been some overwhelming public opinion. Like so many other things that Labor does, it is due to some sort of internal factional power play. Even from his post-politics career former Senator Conroy is still lobbing bombs into the Victorian factional system, with zero consideration for the decisions that were made by his Labor colleagues down here, but putting them straight into a trap of their own making. Because if they are short one vote in the federal Senate with so much being at stake there and often hanging on one vote — —
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER — Oh! Mr Dalidakis has got his own intelligence on the operations of the Senate — —
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER — That is right; you worked for Senator Conroy, Mr Dalidakis. The pairing system has broken down in relation to the House of Representatives. Who knows how long Labor was going to keep this game going down here, and who knows how long it would have been before the federal coalition tried the same thing in tit-for-tat manner. Unfortunately what that means is that we are now correcting the error, but the bad precedent that established it remains. There has been no change of heart from the members of the gangster government over there. Ninety-nine per cent of all of their politics is the internal politics of the Labor Party, and they wonder why when the effects are felt out here in the broader world it leaves the population cold.
The Greens welcome this motion. We have moved and supported motions similar to it, and now oddly we are getting the reverse motion from the reverse backflip from the lower house. I do not imagine members will pipe up in support of this motion here, but members down there certainly had to speak out of the other side of their faces. Unfortunately there has been no change of heart and no change of behaviour in the way this government operates. They are doing the right thing for entirely the wrong reasons, and the damage has been done, because some future government will come along and pick up this bad precedent and drag us further down the slippery slope.
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