Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

While the country is tuned in to listen to Grace Tame's and Brittany Higgins's fight for more equality, the Prime Minister is here legislating for more discrimination and hate. Make no mistake, this bill is a Trojan horse for hate. It looks like it's not just the government that's backing it but that the opposition might as well.

This bill will mean more discrimination, not less. This bill does harm. The debate around this bill is already doing harm. We know that already, under existing law, it is legal in many places to discriminate against, victimise and bully people on the basis of their identity. We've seen that play out over recent weeks, as a school says it's going to start expelling students on the basis of who they are. That is under the existing law. The response of the government and the opposition isn't to come in here and say, 'Let's fix that up.' It's instead to take trans kids and throw them under the bus. The debate, before this bill has even passed, is already doing harm. No child in this country should have to wake up to headlines that say they are being traded off as political collateral in an attempt to get a hateful bill through. But that is what is happening just with the debate, and it will get worse if this bill passes. It will get worse.

It's worth reminding ourselves of a couple of basic things. The first is that I suspect everyone in this parliament would agree that we should stop victimisation on the basis of religion. A simple piece of legislation that's based on our existing discrimination laws could do that. But that's not what this bill is. This bill doesn't just have some shields; it has a lot of swords, and those swords can do a lot of harm. Why does this bill have so many swords? You have to remember the second basic fact: how did we get ourselves here? We didn't find ourselves here because there was an identified gap in the law—even though there is, and it's one that we could fill with, I suspect, unanimous support if the government had goodwill. We're here because the hard right of the government didn't want marriage equality. They didn't want love to be equal in this country. So the price they secured for allowing a vote on marriage equality was to be able to come back and unwind some of those protections by increasing discrimination against some of the people who fought for and obtained equality in the first place.

That is why this bill is before us. That is why this bill contains provisions that allow people to go and do things tomorrow that would not be lawful today, as well as extending so many things that are lawful today but shouldn't be. If this bill proceeds, with Liberal and Labor support, then a doctor will be able to tell their patient that they think their illness is a punishment from God because they're gay. A school will be able to sack an unmarried teacher because she's pregnant and that's against the school's beliefs. That is where we are going with this legislation.

Worse: if you've got existing protections under state laws, because you and your community have fought so hard for equality, those protections are going to be taken away. This bill explicitly says that the ability to do all of those things takes away protections you've got under state law. This bill is based on the presumption that, somehow, trans kids are victimising and discriminating against religious bodies and that, somehow, religious bodies need protection from trans kids and people. That is wrong. And that is why this bill does harm: because the discrimination and the hurt are happening the other way around. As a parliament, we should be able to say that we can protect one group of people without taking away the rights of another group. But this government is so intent on delivering for the Tony Abbotts and the Eric Abetzs, and all of those lobby groups that come out and preach hate that it is willing to throw others under the bus. That is unacceptable.

This bill trades the rights of trans people for votes, and it looks like Labor's also getting ready to support it. As things stand at the moment, thanks to a few members of the government backbench who have seen sense and understand that in modern-day Australia we need less discrimination, not more, it looks like the government might not have the numbers to get the bill through. It looks like the only way the government will get its legislation through is if the Labor Party backs it. In other words, the Labor Party is in a position to block this bill. We are calling on the Labor Party to join with the Greens, the members of the crossbench and the members of the government backbench, who know this bill is wrong, and block it and send the government back to the drawing board to come up with a bill that protects people's rights without taking away the rights of others. That's what we could do.

Quite a few of us are going to be pushing for amendments in this place and in the Senate. We hope that we will improve a bad bill. The numbers may be there to do that. The question is: what happens if those amendments don't get passed? What happens if, after all those amendments, the government says, 'No, we still want it to be legal for a doctor to tell their patient they're sick as a punishment from God,' or 'We want it to be legal for a trans kid to be expelled from school,' or 'We want it to be legal for an unmarried teacher to lose her job because she's pregnant'? What happens then? That's what we should do when we have the numbers to block his bill. It is not enough to say, 'Oh, we might fix it up later on.' I've heard that script before, and these things tend not to get unwound. That happened with marriage equality. It got passed in this House, with Labor voting for it, and it took us years and years of campaigning to get those freedoms back. It didn't happen overnight, and a lot of harm was done in that time. We now have the opportunity in this place to stop hurt and discrimination from happening. We know that hurt is happening right now. People in the community are listening and watching and reading the debate and saying: 'Why am I political collateral? I am a kid trying to live my life; why do you want to make it easier for people to discriminate against me and hurt me?' We can stop that.

In this government's dying days it is trying to fight a culture war because its got nothing else left in the tank. It is trying to increase discrimination and hate, because that's what it promised the preachers of right-wing hate it would do. I am pleading with the Labor Party not to throw the Prime Minister a hate-filled life raft in the dying days of this government by trading off trans kids for votes. Yes, we will all come in here and try to improve this bill. The question is: what do we do if it's still a bad bill and we can block it? Do we block it or do we wave it through? Over the weekend, I was really proud to march again in the Pride March in St Kilda. I saw members of the Labor Party there. I think it's great they were there. They were wearing T-shirts that said 'Equality is non-negotiable'. Let's find out whether that's true. I sincerely hope that we block this bill. That will be a great day.

We expect hate from this government, because, as I said, this bill is only here as a sop to the far Right within the government. It's not here out of a genuine desire to protect religions from victimisation. This government has perpetrated victimisation against so many groups. I've heard the Islamophobia coming from this government and members of this government. I've heard them round on groups in my community when they thought it would win votes. This government doesn't care about protecting people from discrimination. It wants to increase it, so we expect it. We expect it from this government. But, if this government is supported, and this Trojan Horse for hate gets through because of the Labor Party, we will let every person in this country know, right up until the election and beyond, that the Labor Party just facilitated the Prime Minister's bill to increase discrimination and increase hate in this country. That will be something that every voter needs to hear, because it's about what you do when you have some power, how you exercise it. Do you exercise it on behalf of those who need help or do you trade them away in the hope that you might win some votes somewhere else?

I'll tell you this. As a member who has been privileged enough to represent the diverse electorate of Melbourne for a few years now, I know what it is to fight against Islamophobia and to fight against the discrimination and victimisation that so many of our Muslim Australians feel on a daily basis, at the same time as fighting to defend the rights of our LGBTI communities. We had the highest yes vote in the country during the plebiscite, and we have also led the charge against Islamophobia. When you fight on the basis of your values and you say they are not for sale, people respect it. When you start trading off your values and saying that a group of people who struggle every day to go to school, to go to work, to get up in the morning in many instances—not in all but in many instances they do, and the research tells us that many of them are doing it harder because of the messages that come out of places like this. They're the people you fight for when you've got the chance. They're the people to whom you say, when you've got the chance to vote, 'We are going to defend you.'

When we finally achieved marriage equality in this country, after years and years of pushing—the Greens, the community groups, eventually getting others on board—it made a difference. It made a difference not just to people who wanted to get married but to everyone who didn't, because it sent a message from this place that all love is equal, and that's the message we should be sending. That's the message we should be sending now: no matter who you are, you are loved. It is our responsibility as parliamentarians to remove discrimination and say to everyone—every young kid who is growing up in a country town who is unsure about who they're attracted to, everyone who is turning up to school worried about whether they're going to fit in—'You are loved. You are loved the way you are, and we will always defend you.' That's what we will do as the Greens. That's what all of us have the opportunity to do in this place and that's what we should do by rejecting this bill.

See this speech in context