Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Abetz might be very proud to have London reading the story about this today. I am not, because I respect the Australian Constitution. I respect the ACT parliament and its right to make laws for its people. But, fundamentally, this debate is about much more than that. I am a proud Australian, just as you are, but the values that I want to put out there for my country are freedom, cooperation, respect and human dignity. Every time that you stand up for Guantanamo Bay and you are proud of the fact that you are keeping David Hicks incarcerated there, every time that you stand up and overrule issues like this, Senator Abetz, you are sending a message to the rest of the world about what this country stands for. When you stand in front of that flag and invoke Gallipoli and the spirit of the Anzacs, let me tell you that you do not stand for the values of the majority of Australian people, who believe that the soldiers who went to Anzac Cove went to fight for freedom, democracy, tolerance, the rule of law and antidiscrimination. They did not go and stand for violating human rights. They absolutely did not go for that reason. Those soldiers would turn in their graves if they knew what has happened with regard to the Geneva convention against torture. Let me tell you that.

So let us hear it: what is your fundamental value system? How does that value system correlate with keeping David Hicks in Guantanamo Bay? How does your value system stand with violating UN sanctions and going into Iraq? How does your value system sit with not even being prepared to keep a list, a count, of civilian deaths in Iraq because of your government’s attitudes? Tell me that in the broad context of a values debate. I will tell you that the Australian people want fairness, tolerance and decency. They do not want to see an absolute violation of human rights and a refusal to treat people as equal under the law, which is what the Commonwealth is trying to do in overriding the ACT’s legislation. I hope that there will be sufficient numbers of people who respect the long history of liberalism, before the whole neoliberal debate came on. People who are true liberals in this parliament will cross the floor and vote for equal treatment under the law. They will vote for love and commitment, not intolerance and discrimination, in relation to this legislation.