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

I was, of course, referring to Senator Hanson. This bill has been debated in this place in such a way that it is the rights of people to be racist and nasty versus the rights of others in the community to be safe. There is a lot of talk about the rights of racists and, apparently, the need for them to have more protection; not much talk about how we work to unify our country. Laws are made to protect people, not to protect the perpetrators. Australia is better than this—much, much better than this. That is why I am thankful that, despite the waste of time on this nasty, pathetic, small-minded piece of legislation today, it will be rejected because, deep in their hearts, most members in this chamber understand that Australians do not accept this.

Australians would prefer that we were debating things that really matter, such as the unemployment rate. We have record high youth unemployment at the moment. Where is the debate on that? We have growing inequality in this country. Where is our genuine discussion about that? I do not think there is any Australian—I do not know anyone—who works all day, picks up their kids after school, gets home, cooks the dinner, sits down and says: 'Oh, you should've seen what happened to me today. I just couldn't be a racist. What is this country coming to?' No-one in their right mind who believes in this country being the best it can be thinks that we need to weaken our laws. No-one believes that except the people who want to continue to get away with spreading hatred and stirring hatred for their own political gain.

One of the worst things about this piece of legislation is just how bitterly disappointing the Prime Minister has been in all of this. The Prime Minister has put this piece of legislation up purely for internal politics. He was prepared to give a space where we had Senator Roberts stand up and vilify whole swags of the Australian Muslim community. He gave Senator Roberts—as a middle-aged white guy—a platform to stand here and say all of these awful things under the privilege of the parliament. The Prime Minister allowed that to happen, all because he is worried about his own internal political fight in his own party. He is bitterly disappointing on this.

This bill never should have been brought to this parliament. The fact that this is a piece of government legislation that we are debating in government time says so much about the character of the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull: weak, under siege and spineless. The leader of our nation is meant to be somebody who unites people, who talks about what makes us a great country, but instead he has provided an entire week of debate where we have seen members of our Australian community denigrated and vilified in our chambers of parliament. And our Prime Minister has sat by and said, 'Oh, this is what I want my last week of this sitting period to be dominated by.' He is weak, he is spineless and this is not a human rights amendment bill; this is Malcolm Turnbull's appeasement to the trolls bill. That is what is in this chamber today. That is what has to be voted down tonight.

I do not want to hear over and over again when we get to committee stage that we have to have more rights for people like Senator Hanson and Senator Roberts to stand in this place under privilege, kick members of other cultural groups and communities just because they do not like them and then have the gall to say that somebody might dare call their senators and their party a bunch of racists. If you don't want to be accused of being a racist, don't do it.