Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Prime Minister talks about agility, about flexibility. But increasingly it is clear just how brittle he is, how brittle the agenda of the Abbott-Turnbull government is. This is not just a matter of style. It is not just about the government having a glass jaw in this place, no. One of the worst features of the Abbott-Turnbull government is its hostility to all those who have a view different than their own; a hostility to open debate and discussion; a hostility to the vibrant civil society required to foster that kind of debate. Ever since taking power, this government have been unremitting in their attempts to suppress civil society, to intimidate those voices which do not agree with them.

A report released yesterday by the Human Rights Law Centre details just how serious the Abbott-Turnbull government's attacks on Australian civil society have been and how dangerous that is for our democracy. Since being elected in 2013, the Liberals have cut funding to community groups and legal services which work on the reform of the law. They have forced community groups receiving government funding to sign agreements gagging them from weighing in on public policy debates.

The government have not only defunded the Environmental Defenders' Office—legal groups which work to defend the environment and to improve our environment protection laws—but also attempted to stop all kinds of community groups as well as ordinary farmers and private citizens from challenging government environmental decisions in the courts. And though these combative, small-minded policies were introduced under former Prime Minister Abbott, there has been no change in direction from the new Prime Minister. If anything, he has doubled down. He is just as committed to stripping funding from community legal organisations. He is just as committed to gagging independent voices in policy debates. And he is just as committed to banning ordinary people and their communities from challenging government decisions which threaten them in the courts—the most basic of rights in a democratic system like ours.

On 14 September, the member for Wentworth said that we needed a different style of leadership. He was right then. But he has had nearly six months to do something about it now—six months in the highest elected office in the land. And he has proved over and over and over again that he is no different, no different at all to the man he was willing to do anything to depose. He is a man who is full of talk who says one thing and does another, and he has proved that to us on a daily basis since coming to office. (Time expired)

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