Senator BOB BROWN (Tasmania—Leader of the Australian Greens) (15:59): The process here is one of denying amendments to motions that are put up for formality and we have had a series of denials of those amendments in the Senate in recent days. Senators may notice that has not stopped the effect of the amendments coming before the chamber as they doing that as whole motions seriatim and that will continue. I think, however, that where amendments are to be moved to the motions there ought to be a better mechanism and the amendments ought to be treated with a vote the same as the substantial motions. We have not got to that point yet and here we are debating whether there should be a suspension of standing orders to effectively debate the motion—and I will listen to debate to work that out. But what I do want to say is that Senator Hanson-Young is absolutely right here: what we have is a move by the coalition, which had no compunction a few years ago to be locking up hundreds of children behind razor wire in deserts in Australia to the point where there was psychological scarring for life, now claiming that sending people to this country— Senator Abetz: No, that is wrong. That is just false. Senator BOB BROWN: Senator Abetz, for the record, is denying that happened. Well, I do not know how you deny such an obvious piece of history, but sending people off to Nauru or to Manus Island for that effect and to Malaysia is not only a huge trial upon the wellbeing of people who try to come to this country to escape persecution elsewhere but the wrong thing to do. We are a nation that is mature and that is part of the common global community of nations and we ought to be taking on our responsibilities—and the High Court pointed this out when it turned down the government's legislation effectively to bounce people back off to Malaysia. But it was not just the Malaysian solution that the High Court was ruling out; it was the Nauru solution and the Manus Island solution as well, for example, on the basis that these abrogate Australia's obligation under the refugee convention—which Sarah Hanson-Young has so rightly brought into this debate because it is front and centre—to give people fleeing persecution and coming to our shores access to Australian laws. Whichever one of these offshore options you are looking at it cuts across that requirement of the refugee convention. I notice Senator Abetz, in his delivery, said words to the effect that we swap one illegal entrant for each five of theirs. Let me pull him up on that again—and we must have done that so many times in this chamber. These are not illegal entrants; these people are asylum seekers. Senator Fierravanti-Wells: They are. Senator BOB BROWN: They are not, Senator Fierravanti-Wells—and that is the problem you have. Senator Fierravanti-Wells: I used to do this for a living. I have deported a lot more people in my career than you have done. Senator BOB BROWN: This has been happening all day. You are another interjector— Senator Fierravanti-Wells interjecting— Senator BOB BROWN: and a recycled interjector at that on the benches over there— Opposition senators interjecting— The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order on my left! Senator BOB BROWN: But it is one of those things, isn't it? They are not illegal entrants. They have a legal right to seek solace in this country. That is what is in the refugee convention, signed under the government of Sir Robert Menzies, or Robert Menzies as he was then. That is what we signed up to way back in the 1950s under a more noble, humane and globally thinking government of the opposition kind more than half a century ago.