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Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate Wade Mark con­demned what he de­scribed as ha­rass­ment and in­tim­i­da­tion di­rect­ed at In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors, say­ing such ac­tions un­der­mine par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy and will not be tol­er­at­ed.

Speak­ing dur­ing Mon­day’s sit­ting, Mark is­sued a point­ed re­buke to those tar­get­ing mem­bers of the Up­per House over their votes, par­tic­u­lar­ly ahead of the de­bate on the con­tro­ver­sial Prime Min­is­ter’s Pen­sion (Amend­ment) Bill, 2025.

“When words or ac­tions cross the line in­to ha­rass­ment, in­tim­i­da­tion or at­tempts to shame sen­a­tors for how they vote or pres­sure them to vote in a par­tic­u­lar way, that is some­thing en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent—and it will not be tol­er­at­ed,” Mark said. “Such ac­tions strike at the very heart of par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy and may con­sti­tute a se­ri­ous breach of priv­i­lege.”