Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Two weeks, was it? Your arguments in that case were even more puerile, if I might say, with respect, than your arguments here. At least I can understand what you are getting at here. But I think your arguments on the regional forest agreement demonstrated that you had no interest whatsoever in sustainable forestry, no interest in forestry at all and, in fact, very little interest in the environment. The only significant thing in that debate was that Senator Brown was actually talking about something that was related to the environment. Most of the issues he talks about in this chamber have nothing to do with the environment. I always think it is a bit of a fraud on the Australian public that Senator Brown masquerades under the name of the Australian Greens, when most of his contributions to this place have little to do with the environment, certainly little to do with sustainability.

I quite clearly oppose Senator Brown’s bill. Shock, horror, one might say; there is one thing I think Senator Brown and I might have agreed upon, which is vaguely related to the bill before us today—that is, the issue of euthanasia. We had a similar disallowance debate some years ago on the question of euthanasia. At that time I agreed with the substance of the debate. I think Senator Brown and I in that instance might have curiously been on the one side. I think at the time I was the federal minister for the territories, and there were two reasons which led me to Senator Brown’s side of the substantive debate. One was that, as territories minister, I thought we should at least have some regard for the Northern Territory parliament. Perhaps more importantly, in a substantive way, for all the reasons I mentioned in that speech, I agreed with the proposal to effectively allow euthanasia. In speaking on this debate, I certainly do not want to rehash the arguments surrounding the controversies in the euthanasia debate. Suffice to say that, in that instance, Senator Brown and I were on the same side insofar as the substantive issue was concerned.

The bill before us at the moment is not one that I think should be supported by the chamber. The Constitution is a document that was brought together over a substantial period of time by some of the best minds that were then available in what I can only refer to as the continent of Australia; it was not the Commonwealth of Australia, because that was created by the Constitution. Mr Acting Deputy President, as you would well know, there were some colonies that came together, and representatives of those colonies met for many days, over a period of many years, to get a constitution that would suit what was to become the Commonwealth of Australia. Rather than having six colonies, we were joining together in one nation.

Our founding fathers had to carefully consider the best form of arrangements for running what would become the Commonwealth of Australia—and this constitution was put together. No-one just woke up one morning and said: ‘A constitution is a good idea. Let’s write this down and make it the rules for our country into the future.’ This written document, the Constitution, was the subject of many hours, many days, many weeks, many years of intense scrutiny, debate and very careful legal drafting. Of course, it has stood the test of time. On many occasions, there have been attempts to change the Constitution. There have been some occasions on which the Constitution has been changed, but almost invariably the Constitution has not been changed.

One change did happen—and one might say that the constitutional fathers were not quite right in this—to allow Indigenous people to have, put simply, the rights that other Australians had. One might say that demonstrated that the founding fathers did not have the best document for the Constitution of our nation but, of course, things were quite different in those days. I suspect that, in the days when that clause was originally introduced, people would have thought it was the right thing for everyone involved, including Indigenous people. I am delighted that a Liberal government led the charge to have that changed. That is one instance in which the people of Australia, under the leadership of a Liberal government, brought about a change in the Constitution of Australia.

That change occurred because attitudes had changed dramatically. It is a bit like the debate we are having about the 457 visas, which, it seems, the Labor Party are totally opposed to. Some of their rhetoric—certainly, Mr Beazley’s rhetoric—has shades of the old White Australia policy, which, as you know, was introduced and supported—