Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The reason that I moved this motion was that I think we can all agree that some of the language that has been used in this debate over the last few weeks has not been respectful, has not been appropriate and clearly has not been parliamentary. If we are to be honest about the fact that we are obviously going to continue discussing these difficult issues in this chamber then let us agree as a group of senators, as community leaders, that the type of language that we use is important when speaking about people and their motives. It needs to be done delicately. We do not want to see dog whistling. We do not want to see discrimination. We do not want to hear words used that have been used over the past few weeks, like ‘scum’, ‘terrorist’ and ‘illegals’. They are actually not helpful to the debate.

We need a level of maturity in this debate in order for us to come up with real solutions—a level of maturity which is actually much higher than what we have seen of late. If this is a commitment from both the members of the government and the members of the opposition, including Senator Fierravanti-Wells, to act more maturely, to treat people in this debate more respectfully, then I take that in good measure and I take that in goodwill. All I was asking for was a commitment on paper. I will take your word that you will be mature in this debate and that we will see a cessation in the use of words that are used to simply dog whistle hatred and disrespect.