If the government members were on this side, trust me, they'd be making the same argument.
We didn't pick this fight, which is part of what my main theme is. We didn't pick this fight; the government did. This is not about their right to do what they want because they have a mandate. They did not have a mandate to take away the rights of the minority. I didn't hear anybody make that speech in the last election. I didn't see it in their election material. They have no mandate to do this, yet they think they can roll in here and force us to accept it based on their vote alone, because that's the amendment in front of us. It's unreasonable. It's undemocratic. It's unfair. It's nuts.
It's nuts that the government thought that. I'm hearing that some of them on the other side were sort of surprised that we reacted the way we did. Really? You want to take away the only real effective means that we have to express displeasure with the government. At the risk, by the way, of being held to account for possibly being obstructionist, you want to take that away, provide no fair process, and expect that we're going to be happy, that somehow this wasn't going to happen.
Again, it perplexes me. I don't understand. I understand what they want, which is everything, all the power and control, total control. They want to neuter the opposition so that all they can do is squawk now and then and do a few quotes in the media, but nothing real that would get in the way of this divinely inspired government to do as it pleases. Somehow they thought that it wasn't going to be problematic. Who is making these decisions? It's nobody who has been around here for a while.
I won't name names. I don't know who made the decision, but I do know how silly it is. However, hope springs eternal. My mother taught me, hope springs eternal.
Mr. de Burgh Graham is going to speak after me, and maybe by the time he is done the light will go on and I'll think, oh, now I feel so bad having said those things. That could happen and I'll be spending the next four hours apologizing and going back over all the horrible things I said, because Mr. de Burgh Graham enlightened me as to why the government is doing this and why it's a good thing for me and a good thing for my constituents.
I await that spellbinding presentation. However, I know you're saying, no, we need more from you, David, much more. Those who have more must give more. You're the only one who has offered any real hope that there might be an answer as to why this is being done.
On prorogation and the filibuster, again, I will be very interested to hear the government, once they get going, on how this is a good thing. In terms of the only way that taking away filibuster can be good, given the fact that the government cannot, in my opinion, statistically prove that filibusters are abused to the point where they are becoming a regularized, obstructionist measure on the part of the opposition. Good luck with that. I was a part of a good number of the filibusters in the last few years and there aren't that many. Maybe that's why. Maybe I'm the best insurance for fewer filibusters because nobody wants to hear from me. That's fine. The goal is not to have filibusters.
Filibusters are only used when you feel that you have no other choice but to just go on and on, as I'm doing now, and hopefully get enough attention from the public and get the public on side such that the government feels the pressure, comes to their senses, backs down from this, and gives us the opportunity, if they really want to make these changes, to do it in a way that has some semblance of respect and how things have been done in the past.
I don't know, Blake, when you're getting ready. I'm going to go down another road now, but at whatever point you want to jump in, if it's five or 10 minutes from now, that will be good. However, I'll get a start down here.
What I want to do is again point out that the government is the one that....
David, I do have to take a moment to get this right. Does it say “McGrath”, but everybody says “McGraw”? Help me.