That Greens walkout: no, senator, it was a stunt

As leader, perhaps DiNatale should have awarded himself that short straw. A vital test of leadership is never to ask someone to do something you regard as unconscionably unpleasant. That’s why, in the argot of the age, you get the big bucks.

Di Natale claimed of his contingent’s walkout that they were standing up for decency. He says, quite rightly, that Hanson’s near-tears presentation of Muslims as a risk to Australia because if they’re not stopped they’ll overrun the place is offensive and wrong.

It’s also thoroughly risible: more worth a laugh than consideration. It’s the product of a one-eyed view that is uninformed by much that appears to connect with rationality or with anything else that would withstand objective scrutiny.

Like her mewling over the (non-existent) Asian migration tsunami during her previous lamentable incarnation as a federal politician from Queensland, it’s a view that comes with an unpleasant whiff of thrice-fried bile and soggy chips.

Muslims represent 2.2 per cent of the Australian population. On the numbers alone, the country is in more danger to being overrun by One Nation. Which would be far worse, in any case.

But while the Greens may have thought they were “standing up for decency” when they walked out on Hanson’s first speech, what they were actually doing was indulging in a schoolyard protest, a high-profile but fundamentally base political stunt.

The Senate, for all its faults, should not be used for such purposes.

The Greens have much to contribute to national debate and Australian governance. They should focus on that worthwhile effort.