Anthony Albanese:

“I will make four points. You’re quite right that within this chamber, leaders and ministers cannot be asked about their decisions to be made by political parties.

The question clearly went to that and are refer to previous answers made by prime ministers, ministers, leaders of political parties that those decisions are matters for the political party. That is the first point that I make.

The second point is I just refer to your comments about the consent about the leverage in the question to say that. I will just referred to the director-general of ASIO about turning the heat down where possible. We have a responsibility to do that and it is in Australia’s interest that occur and I say that consistently.

The third issue that I will say is that the reasons why there are four current members of the Greens political party in the House of Representatives, all four of them are there and in the Member for Melbourne’s seat was because a political party gave preferences to Adam Bandt which saw upon Lindsay Tanner retirement as Member of Melbourne saw Adam Bandt elected and he has continued to serve.

As for the other three, the Queensland LNP made a decision to put the Queensland Greens into the Queensland by giving them preferences and getting them elected so that is the third point that I make.

The fourth point that I make is that I joined at a very young age a major political party that sought to be a party of government, the Australian Labor Party, a party that I have supported since I came out of the womb, Mr Speaker, and a party that seeks to make a difference because, like many of us on this side of the house, we were raised in families in which being Labor and making a difference and standing up for fairness and equity was something we were raised with from a very early age, whether it be from our parent or from the Josephite nuns”