MATTERS OF URGENCY

Senator McKIM (Tasmania—Australian Greens Whip) (16:34): The Greens won't be supporting this motion to suspend standing orders by the government. I want to be very clear why that is. If you look at any given week in this Senate, the item of business that gets far and away the biggest slice of this Senate's time is government business.

That is a consistent fact across any given sitting week in this chamber. This item that we actually should be debating but we're not because the government has moved to suspend standing orders is where opposition and crossbench senators get to bring issues that are important to the people we represent into the Senate and have them debated, either as matters of public importance or matters of urgency, and this is a precious time for us.

The PRESIDENT: Senator McKim. I'm going to draw you back to the suspension. Senator McKim: I'm explaining— The PRESIDENT: You're not in a debate with me.

I'm drawing you back to the suspension. Senator McKIM: The reason we are not to going support the suspension is that we want to preserve the precious time for matters of public importance and matters of urgency that represent the people we represent in this place, whether we be Greens, opposition or other crossbenchers. We are not going to oppose the suspension because we agree with the proposition that One Nation is putting in their matter of urgency.

We don't agree with that. We do not agree with what One Nation is bringing forward. However, there are mechanisms for us to voice that disagreement.

We can simply mount arguments against what anyone is proposing in a matter of urgency, as we would have on this one, and we can vote against it. I don't understand why the Labor Party doesn't seem to have the courage of its convictions and confidence in its own capacity to run an argument here, because if you had the courage— The PRESIDENT: Senator McKim, I'm going to draw you back to the matter before the chamber, which is the suspension.

Senator McKIM: The reason we are not supporting the suspension is because we have the confidence in our capacity to run an argument against the central proposition that One Nation is putting. It's a shame that the government doesn't have that same confidence in their capacity to run that argument. Matters of urgency and matters of public importance are non-government time.

The government gets plenty of time in any given sitting week to debate its issues, and we've spent many hours already this week debating government issues and pieces of legislation that the government has brought in, and that is fine. That is what is provided for in the standing orders. For the government to come in and seek to reframe a debate that has been put forward in an item of business that is reserved for non-government senators is frankly disgraceful, and it will not be supported by the Australian Greens.

I want to place very clearly on the record that, outside of absolutely exceptional circumstances, we will not allow or support amendments to matters of public importance or matters of urgency. We won't, and we will preserve the right as far as we are able for non-government senators to bring in issues, no matter how misguided we may think they are. We do think One Nation's is misguided.

However, we will preserve that right of non-government senators to bring their issues before this chamber. We would prefer to be mounting the robust arguments that I had prepared against One Nation's crazy policy on superannuation. That's what we would prefer to be debating today.

But Labor, by moving a suspension, has narrowed the scope of this debate so much that that really critical debate, around how flawed the One Nation policy is, now cannot occur in this time, because Labor, in an act of strategic stupidity, has prevented that debate from occurring. If you've got the courage of your convictions and you think you can mount an argument against an MPU, mount the argument against it and vote accordingly.

That is my advice to the government.