Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Before this debate was interrupted earlier today by members' statements, I was speaking to the House about my frustration that the government, through their work on this bill, have created such anxiety in our community. Like many other members of the House, people within the LGBTI community have also been contacting me. They're very worried and incredibly anxious about the implications of this bill, and what effect it will have on them, their family and people in the LGBTI community.

I want to take a moment to acknowledge some of the concerns they have raised with me. In a debate like this, one that is so personal, when we are talking about the rights of individuals, it's important to remember and to reflect on the voices and on the issues that are raised with us. And I should say that many of the people who wrote to me haven't just written to me in the past 24 hours; they wrote me some time ago. The moment that the exposure bill was released, they were raising their concerns.

Graham from Eaglehawk was concerned that this bill would 'encourage hatred and hypocrisy', the kind that made his life hell as a young gay student. He was taunted, and he is haunted to this day by his experiences. He is now in his 60s. Penelope from Castlemaine raised with me that there is nothing obscene about being a transgender child. 'These kids are normal, and they should have the same opportunities as other kids.' Terri from Kyneton raised with me: 'My daughter is transgendered. I implore you to vote against any bill that would allow any discrimination of kids within the transgender community. Transgender kids deserve all the same rights afforded to other kids. They deserve acceptance, respect and support.' These are just some of the many comments I've received from people in our community. It's important to raise them, because if the government say they've fixed these issues in this bill—that they are going to protect kids, that kids will not be discriminated against as a result of this bill—then they have a lot of work to do to rebuild trust in our community. Our community is sceptical of this bill because the government have not gone about it in the right way. They have not brought people with them.

When we're talking about an issue, and we're talking about rights and we're talking about discrimination, it can be something that's a unifying moment for our country. It can be a moment that brings people together. It can be a moment that empowers people and allows others to say, 'I stand with you'. We've done this in the past. But unfortunately, in this bill, when we should be celebrating bringing together and talking about protections for people and ending discrimination against people of faith, the government have been able to wedge and divide our community because of the way they have handled the debate and consultation.

I was very concerned this bill was coming to the House without due proper process. And whilst the government had the exposure drafts out there, they haven't allowed the Australian people adequate time to voice their concerns about this bill. In recognising the importance of religious freedoms for so many Australians, Labor called for a joint parliamentary inquiry to be conducted, with significant time for all interested Australians to review these complex laws and make considered submissions to inform the process. That would allow people the time to debate, to discuss, to work through their differences. The government point-blank refused to allow such an inquiry, and instead two parliamentary committees did good work on reviews rushed through over the Christmas period. Over the Christmas period!

That simply isn't enough time, nor does it give people the respect of being involved in this process.

Even with the tight constraints that these committees had to operate within, both reviews identified multiple problems with these laws. To this date, when we stand here, with the government saying they have amendments, we are not convinced that those amendments actually go towards resolving a number of the complex problems in this bill. One of those that I am most concerned about, and that a number of Victorians have raised with me, particularly in my electorate, is the way that these laws propose to override state antidiscrimination laws. While people in Victoria have worked so hard to come together to set up a state system where all people have rights, regardless of religion, sexuality, gender or race, we are now in a situation where the federal government may override some of those.

I speak to this, thinking about what happened in Bendigo not that long ago. In preparing for this speech, I went back and read over the notes, the transcripts, the media and a lot of what happened in Bendigo in the debate around building a mosque in our electorate. If there is a group of Australians who has suffered religious vilification the most, the Bendigo Muslim community is up there on the list. They wanted to build a mosque in their region. They found the perfect site. They put in a planning application to the City of Greater Bendigo, which satisfied the city, and it passed.

Then Bendigo became the backdrop of a horrible fight about religion, where the far Right invaded our town and conducted some hideous acts of racial vilification. There were mock beheadings out the front of the City of Greater Bendigo. There were taunts and rants. We had someone fly down from Queensland and drive around in a truck shouting racist slogans and vilification towards people of the Muslim faith. It wasn't a local but someone who wanted to come down to try to influence our community. What happened on social media was that a post kept being pushed out to our social media networks that was just a lie. It was fake news. It was a photo of the fountain with a made-up headline that Muslim men had raped a local girl. It was a complete lie. It was created and pushed out to our Facebook pages to create fear, to vilify people of the Muslim faith and to stop the mosque from going ahead.

The mosque dispute went to VCAT, which upheld the council decision to allow the mosque to be built. It then went to the Supreme Court. It went all the way to the High Court, and what was frustrating for a lot of the people in the Bendigo Muslim community was that they were partly on the sidelines because it wasn't technically their faith that was on trial; it was a planning decision that was on trial. But the Victorian government introduced laws, and we did see some of the individuals involved in these despicable acts of religious vilification prosecuted. For the first time, a criminal charge under the Victorian Racial and Religious Tolerance Act was tested in court, and three men found to be involved in the video of the mock beheading were convicted and found guilty of serious contempt in ridiculing Muslims.

It was a moment for our town that we're still healing from, and it's a moment that many communities across Australia probably have firsthand experience of. But why it relates to this debate is that, when I reach out to people of faith to talk about this bill, what many of them have said to me is, 'I don't want our faith to be blamed for a teacher getting sacked or a kid getting expelled, because if that's what this bill allows then that goes against our teaching and our religion.' It speaks to the confusion that exists in our community, and it speaks to the fear both in the faith communities and in the LGBTI community. It is a wedge that this government has created because it has not brought the Australian people along with it. If we are truly serious that we want this law to be a shield that gives protections to people of religion and people of faith, then we need to go back to the beginning and start again and start bringing people with us, because right now the debate is: 'Your rights are more important than my rights.' It is dividing our community, and that is not fair.

The way in which this is being played out, because the government has handled this so badly, is creating so much hurt and fear in our community. I do really feel for the rainbow families tonight in my electorate who are really worried about the impact of this bill, and, whilst we say that there are amendments to this bill, that emotional damage is there and the government needs to be doing more. I do worry about the impact that this will have on our teachers and aged-care workers and people working in religious institutions, who are incredibly stressed already because of the pressures the pandemic is putting on them, and I hope that this isn't the final straw for some of them in choosing whether they go to work tomorrow or not. I also really worry about the impact that this is having on our faith based community, particularly our minority faiths, who feel that they haven't had enough time to consider what is before us.

The bill, in its original intent, would mean that those individuals who created the most horrible acts of racial vilification against the Bendigo Muslim community could have simply said: 'But it was my faith. Christianity is opposed to that,' and they could have got away with it. It is good to hear that those parts of the bill have been stripped out, but it's not good enough to push this through the parliament in the last weeks and months of this term of parliament. We need more time for this bill to be considered, not by us but by our broader community. If we could take a marriage equality debate to a plebiscite when it changed only a couple of words in the Marriage Act, then surely we can give the Australian people more time to consider this complex bill.

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