Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That—

(a) the Senate—

(b) Senator Anning be suspended from the sittings of the Senate and its committees for a period of one day.

Mr President, it's really important to get a few facts on the table here. I note there is some commentary, informed by your statement made today, that such a motion may be unconstitutional. As I said earlier, it's disappointing that that commentary is now running. Your statement didn't refer to any specific motion that we were putting forward, and it would have been helpful had we discussed the very nature of our motion, because this motion makes it very clear that we are seeking a suspension of Senator Anning based on not just his efforts to attribute blame to the victims of the Christchurch massacre outside the chamber but indeed his invocation of the final solution, something he did while he was in the chamber. Further, the motion has been revised to make it very clear that it relates also to Senator Anning's response to the censure motion. His response to the censure motion only a short time ago further sought to blame the victims of that terrorist incident and to vilify people on the basis of religion. I won't go into it, but when you have somebody saying that importing Sudanese migrants wholesale was a failed policy or that Muslim migrants are driven to violence, which leads to increasing violence and terrorism here in Australia, that is the sort of speech that deserves not just condemnation but suspension.

Let us be clear on that first, technical point: this Senate has the power to suspend Senator Anning. Let's be really clear on the second point: we need to decide what standards we are prepared to accept in this chamber. I was suspended from this chamber for calling out sexism. We are now saying that somebody should be suspended for the same period of time for their inflammatory and divisive remarks, comments which amount to hate speech and were made in this chamber. If you ever needed proof of why a suspension is necessary, have a look at the response from Senator Anning to the censure motion. How seriously do you think Senator Anning has taken this censure motion? Indeed, we heard that horrific contribution from Senator Georgiou, reading out a prepared statement effectively backing him in, not supporting a censure motion. We need to go further and make a clear and unequivocal statement; 1½ million people have now signed a petition to say, 'How on earth does this man get the platform that he has in this chamber?' Many millions more Australians are asking the same question.

Senator Bernardi in his pathetic contribution to the debate talked about hate speech and where you draw the line. I'll tell you where a good place to start is. When you talk about the Final Solution in your speech—how about we start from there? When you seek to blame the victims of a massacre, of a terrorist incident—how about we start from there? That's a good place to start. We're open to a debate about where you draw the line. Lines are drawn all the time. Through the course of the debate against the amendments to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, we made a clear-headed decision about where that line should be drawn. Some people wanted to shift it. Some people thought that people had a right to be bigots, but we were concerned that, if you say that someone's got a right to be a bigot, it's only a small step to them acting on that bigotry, and the Australian community came together and said, 'This is where we want that line drawn.' Well, they are coming together right now and saying to us: 'Make a statement. Don't just use empty words but act.' You don't defeat fascism and you don't defeat the parliamentary representative of an emerging Neo-Nazi movement by simply waving your hand and saying what they've said is bad. You do something about it.

We have the power to suspend Senator Anning from this chamber. We could kick him out for the rest of the day. That's all we're asking for. We have amended this motion to say that, in the context of him referring to the 'final solution' in the Senate chamber and in the context of his response to the censure motion, he deserves, at the very least, to be suspended from this chamber for a period of 24 hours. Let's not forget that, only a short time ago, this chamber voted to suspend someone for calling out sexism. How is it that we can have a set of rules that allow this chamber to suspend someone for calling out sexism and yet we haven't got the courage to come together and make a unified statement to say, 'Those views are not welcome on the floor of this parliament'? This is a sacred place. We are elected here to represent the community. We've got our differences—of course we do. We've got differences over the economy; we've got differences over how we address climate change. We have those debates in the chamber all the time, but the one thing that unites us all is that we do not seek to use hate speech to divide our community on the basis of race or religion. We don't do that. That's not what Australia is.

Well, how about this parliament makes a statement now? How about this parliament says to the 1½ million people who signed the petition given to Senator Faruqi to table in this place that we're with them, not with One Nation and not with those other voices of hate? Why don't we tell them that we are with the Australian community and we come together at this moment not just to wave our finger and say 'tut-tut' but to take concrete action to deny this attention seeker the platform that he craves? We can do that right now. All it would take is a simple vote of the chamber and he would be suspended. If the censure motion we debated today had any force, we would have seen some contrition from that senator. We didn't see that. We saw him double down. We saw him use the tactics of the NRA: when you're attacked, go on the offence, offence, offence. It's about time that we as a chamber and as parliamentarians representing the Australian people say enough is enough. It's time to boot this bloke out. It's time for us to make a stand.