Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, we should do it in that order. We are very well aware, by the way, that the guillotine will be used on this legislation within the next 24 hours or so and that the proper debate of this monumental legislation and its impact on this nation will be cut short by the government using its numbers to gag the Senate from such a debate. Let us not beat around the bush here. The measures that would protect children, including the movement of police into the communities, that the government set underway some weeks ago can and will continue.

This legislation we are dealing with now, and which it is proposed by the opposition should come on first, which we agree with, brings up a raft of very contentious matters, including the takeover of Indigenous communities without their consent and the end of the ability of Indigenous communities to regulate access to those communities. We saw just yesterday the police saying that that is a bad thing and that it is not going to give them the control with communities that they have had in the past to safeguard those communities. The legislation includes the taking away of just compensation when communities are taken over under this legislation. This is in breach of the Constitution, and people will have to go to the High Court, because there will be no appeal to this parliament.

This legislation will have been guillotined through here in the rush to the election, for the electoral purposes of the Howard government, supported by the Rudd opposition. It includes giving the coercive powers of the Australian Crime Commission over to be used against black Australians but not white Australians. These powers, which were there to help safeguard this country from international drug smugglers, triads and international criminal outfits, are now being used against individual Indigenous people, households and communities—provided they are Indigenous. You cannot do it if they are non-Indigenous, if it is the rest of Australians. This racist legislation, which, the indication is, the Labor Party is going to support—can you believe it?—will be guillotined somewhere in the next 24 hours. I would not be surprised if that is with the support of the Labor Party either, because, as Mr Rudd said in Tasmania on another matter—the support for the pulp mill and the burning of forests in Tasmania—’I am behind Prime Minister Howard 100 per cent of the way.’ Ditto this legislation.

What a failure of the democratic system. Where are the opposition when this nation needs them? Where is opposition leader Rudd when a stand should be taken for decency in the application of the law, in the parliamentary process and in the democratic relationship between the parliament and the people? All of that is out the window. The best the Leader of the Opposition can do is say ‘me too’ to Prime Minister Howard, this Prime Minister who marked his first month in office by cutting $400 million from what was required in Indigenous spending back in August 1996. And the Prime Minister this year defunded Aboriginal language wherewithal in this country.

This legislation is the death of culture. We know it and you know it. It has not even been debated in this place, and it will not be debated in this place because the guillotine is coming. Is that going to be regretted down the line? Let nobody in this chamber say they did not know—because they do. Everybody knows. Hands up anybody in this chamber who has read the 600 pages in this legislation. Let us see. Not one. Nor has the Prime Minister. Nor has the cabinet.