Cory Bernardi (SA, Australian Conservatives) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the Senate for supporting this matter of importance because our freedoms and our ability to protect and defend our freedoms are critically important to the future wellbeing and welfare of Australia. And they are under threat wherever you go. But, before I get into some of that, I'd like to discuss a matter that has been raised in the Senate which relates to freedom of speech and this cult of victimhood. Earlier—and I was absent from the chamber—Senator Hanson-Young decided that, as a woman, people like me, and she named me amongst others, have been slut-shaming her. I reject that in its entirety. I've never cast any aspersions on Senator Hanson-Young, aside from her behaviour in this chamber.

When I look at Senator Hanson-Young, I don't see a woman; I see a senator. Gender should be blind in this chamber, yet Senator Hanson-Young wants to make it a perpetual grievance—that somehow she's being maligned. She refuses to accept the fact that she yells the most vitriolic and vile abuse at others. I remember the homophobic slurs she would level at previous members of this place who she thought were same-sex attracted and hadn't admitted it. I remember the aberrations and admonishments because people like me didn't want to see asylum seekers drowning at sea. I've seen the cavalier manner in which she uses the truth sparingly in pursuit of her ideological aims. And now she stands up here, because her own leader got tossed out of this place for being unparliamentary—a matter which has been far too long coming because the Greens think the probity, the normality and the requirements of this place do not apply to them. They are sanctimonious and pious and, some would say—

Senator Steele-John interjecting—