Page 3543 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 18 August 2010

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He was asked where he was going to get the money from. He has been pointing to all this extra money to fund education and he did not have an answer. Again, he did not have an answer. So the $2 billion is reliant on a tax that will never happen. It is reliant on the old tax. The prospect of that getting up, as I believe was acknowledged by Senator Brown, was clear. Again, we have this pretending that you are going to do something when you are not. When it comes to issues where the Labor Party and the Greens are of one mind, or of a similar mind, we know there is a much greater prospect that they will get it through.

How do we know the Labor Party’s philosophical position in relation to non-government schools? We have seen it over a number of years. It was only two elections ago that they went to the electorate with a hit list of non-government schools. That is their true position when it comes to non-government schools.

Mr Rattenbury: I rise on a point of order, Madam Assistant Speaker. Mr Seselja and his colleagues have raised a number of points of order about how this is a motion on the cost of living pressures on Canberra families. I am not sure how Senator Brown’s press conference or any of this is relevant to the point that Mr Seselja is making.

MR SESELJA: Madam Assistant Speaker, on the point of order, if I could, please—

MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Okay. Could you stop the clock, please?

MR SESELJA: I will just slowly talk you through perhaps all of the bits and how they are relevant.

MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: No, Mr Seselja, you can sit down. Mr Rattenbury, the question is that the amendment moved by me be agreed to. The amendment reads:

Insert after paragraph (1)(e):

“(ea) the unwillingness of the Leader of the Australian Greens, Senator Bob Brown, to disavow this policy during his address to the National Press Club on Wednesday, 18 August 2010;”.

I think that Mr Seselja is being entirely relevant. Thank you. Can you please start the clocks?

MR SESELJA: Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. There is a hint of desperation in some of the points of order. Where they may—and this our concern—actually get somewhere is if a Labor government is returned and there is a Greens balance of power. On those issues that they philosophically agree on—

Mr Doszpot: Andrew has already agreed on everything.

MR SESELJA: We saw Mr Barr’s passionate defence of them, which suggests that there is some philosophical agreement. I think he used the Prime Minister’s words:


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