Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am absolutely amazed that today we should be looking at a celebration of something which we have just heard the shadow Attorney-General state with great pride is something the opposition will be supporting. In fact, you pointed out that in the five years of our government we had not moved to pick up on this issue—in twelve years of your government you did not even identify this issue.

What we had today was the Attorney-General go out and talk about how we are moving with this process. We are moving forward with one extremely important element: to ensure that there is equity in our community. We are moving forward because we know that we have agreement on this. This is something we can do now that will achieve a result for people who have been waiting for a very long time to have their rights fully enshrined in the legislation. You know, of course, that our government has moved to remove discrimination against people who are in same-sex relationships and who identify in this way, in a whole range of government legislation. In fact, I believe that it is 85 pieces of legislation in which we have removed any discrimination. This particular amendment that we are bringing forward today for this legislation enshrines the fact that people cannot be discriminated against for being in same-sex relationships or being intersex—I will just get the words correct and get that on record—and that is coming forward in legislation.

I am amazed that, instead of actually working and saying that we have achieved this, we have to go back into this extraordinary conspiracy process which was run by the opposition consistently through the extensive Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee proceedings that my friend Senator Crossin chaired—and an astounding amount of submissions came forward—which was looking at consolidating our anti-discrimination laws in Australia. The Attorney-General, on the ABC radio in Brisbane earlier this year—and luckily I happened to be listening to that interview; I do not always hear everything that is on that program, but I did hear that—talked about the tidying-up process. He also talked about changes that would be taking place in that process. What he said clearly this morning in public was that we were going to continue with that work, because it is complex and it is also necessary. The Attorney-General has said on record that we are moving forward with this one piece of legislation today. But there is no abandonment; we are not moving away from the commitment that we made to pull together the five pieces of legislation that are part of that process now.

I cannot understand why this has been portrayed consistently by senators on the other side as some form of attack on, or some form of conspiracy against, free speech. I am not going to go down that track in this short contribution of how we look at free speech in this place. There are quite serious differences around what constitutes free speech. Nonetheless, we need to see that this is not a time in the political process to say that because we have not moved forward with all the recommendations from the wonderful Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee that we are moving away from it. What the Attorney-General has said—and what our government has said—is that this is a work in progress, and it is clearly on the record that that is what we are going to be doing.

I think what we need to see is that there are people on the other side who are opposed to some of the things that were being discussed in that committee. They were open about that. They opposed some things and they put in opposition comments that they do not want those things to happen. That does not work for our side as well. There is no abandonment to our commitment to move forward with our anti-discrimination legislation. This is a step forward, and I believe we have had the commitment that means that it is going to be accepted. So at least that will occur.

I am very sorry that I will not have a chance to talk more deeply about Senator Colbeck's question about the IER. It is something in which I have deep interest and I know that it is something that will cause a great deal of discussion. I sincerely trust that we will hear from Senator Colbeck about the importance of this area in this taking note exercise. I just apologise, through you, Mr Deputy President, that I cannot take up that issue. We are not moving away from our anti-discrimination process.