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

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to table an explanatory memorandum relating to the bill.

Leave granted.

I table an explanatory memorandum and I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

It is time to make a bold and express stand for freedom in this country.

The Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Amendment (Australian Freedoms) Bill 2019 is designed to explicitly protect the inherent, unalienable freedoms of each and every Australian.

The Bill achieves this protection by prescribing a set of fundamental "Australian freedoms" that lawmakers will be required to consider and protect in the design, drafting and appraisal of new laws.

These newly prescribed freedoms include the freedom of opinion, speech, thought, conscience and religion as well as the rights to life and protection of the family. They also include freedom from torture and retrospective criminal laws.

As intended by our liberal-democratic predecessors, these prescribed, unalienable freedoms will be given priority over other human rights. Where competition or conflict occurs, these Australian freedoms will take priority, irrespective of whether the competing right:

Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Act2011

Racial Discrimination Act 1975

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights (the Committee) will be armed with these explicit and prioritised Australian freedoms when carrying out its assessments of proposed laws for compatibility with human rights and freedoms. This will have the effect of better disciplining all lawmakers into preserving, respecting and prioritising our unalienable freedoms. Lawmakers will be less able and inclined to curtail or remove freedoms and only dare propose to—let alone succeed in doing so—if the rationale is explicit, unavoidable and compelling.

The Committee will also be armed with these explicit freedoms when either:

Why is it now necessary to better prescribe and protect what was long implied?

Since Federation, our Constitution, lawmakers and common law practitioners have implicitly upheld these Australian freedoms; treating them as default positions to be keenly defended and protected. They were considered inherent and unalienable; unable to be taken away or transferred, and pre-existing of the state.

In fact, many of our predecessors—or founding fathers of the liberal-democratic West—considered that the nation-state only arises to better ensure, via a constitution, the protection of those unalienable freedoms (and maybe very little more).

Unfortunately, these freedoms—long-considered implied and existing by default in our Constitution and common law—can no longer be taken for granted. As myriad new rights are defined, with new laws enacted and new legal and corporate precedents set, these unalienable freedoms are being gradually whittled down, crowded out and competed away.

In this postmodernist politically correct (PC) era of identity politics, new rights, laws and interpretations are proliferating; ones that reward or appease certain interests and divide humanity into groups, often based on identity. Human and other rights are being increasingly contrived for certain groups or agendas which intrude on and undermine the inherent freedoms, dignity and sanctity of the individual. This in turn unpicks the fabric of liberal-democratic society.

In fact, more—not fewer—anti-discrimination Acts, commissioners and enforcements are being proposed by many, and not always from one side of the political aisle. Moreover, in law and in practice, the term "discrimination" has worryingly broadened. In many circles—both legal and social—it now seemingly also includes criticism, critique and anything other than endorsement, celebration and praise.

Will we one day have to overtly and eagerly applaud certain things as do North Koreans in front of their President?

Tepid tolerance or mere acceptance—that may trigger discomfort, hurt feelings or offence—can be construed as borderline discrimination and grounds for sanction. As such, anti-discrimination laws can become useful weapons to ostracise and suppress criticism of certain positions and views, driving opponents out of the public space and eroding fundamental freedoms of speech, expression, association and conscience. By doing so, it also prevents us from considering, describing and solving problems that a liberal democracy is so good at and exceptional for, relative to the socialist, tyrannical or developing world.

To counter this trend of new PC rights and anti-discrimination law eroding our unalienable freedoms, piecemeal Acts are being proposed to protect very specific freedoms. For example, a freedom of religion Act has been proposed to protect the views and practices of the religious from the relatively new, but burgeoning, rights of the LGBTIQ+/rainbow community; one that has become quite imperialistic and aggressive since winning the same-sex marriage debate in 2017, as many predicted.

Unless handled very carefully—both legislatively and in subsequent interpretations and practice—such a response gravely risks a slippery slope towards blasphemy laws, which certain religions and their adherents will eagerly exploit.

Another trend eating away at our unalienable freedoms is the rise of a disturbing form of PC corporate fascism. Increasingly, large employers and organisations are requiring their employees to sign employment contracts that place myriad PC prohibitions on the private lives, expressions and conduct of those employees; either due to pressure from sponsors, Twitter and social media or from the PC busybodies increasingly nesting in their own human resources or communications branches.

The typical justification is that it helps prevent employees from tarnishing the good name of the employer or brand and risking bringing it into disrepute. This has the effect of employers increasingly owning the lives of their employees in totality; not just the work that they do or the roles and tasks they perform. Without restoring some balance and common sense here, many unalienable freedoms of these individuals will be stripped away as they become, in effect, wards of their employers.

Such freedom-sapping terms in these contracts should not be enforceable, let alone drafted in the first place. However, in this era of Twitter and social media they are becoming the norm and employees feel that they have no choice but to accept and live by them. Whilst this Bill does not directly limit corporate fascism, it will help curb new laws being made that enable and encourage it. It also opens a potential avenue for the examination of existing anti-discrimination laws and practice which, in turn, could help identify and address their freedom-sapping effects.

For example, certain anti-discrimination law and practice can give rise to policies of "diversity and inclusion" in a workplace or industry sector. However, when activists are allowed to drive these policies and their enforcement to the extreme, unwanted views, ideas and people can be conveniently nobbled or even driven out of the public sphere.

This is another justification for an Act that seeks to prioritise the unalienable freedoms of all Australians and helps to remind us of our liberal-democratic roots and better selves.

In the United States, they at least have a Bill of Rights—comprising the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution—to counter these assaults and forays on basic freedoms. We do not. Sadly, it seems, we can no longer rely on our lawmakers, judiciary and corporations to uphold the freedoms that made Australia so free, expressive and prosperous.

These freedoms need to be reasserted—not through a US-style Bill of Rights, which would be overkill—but through a change to the law which makes it far more difficult for the Parliament to ride roughshod over our unalienable freedoms with so little justification when passing laws conferring new rights on certain citizens or groups (or examining existing laws that are shown to gratuitously crimp these freedoms).

Australian freedoms (and sovereignty) are being eroded by forces both within and beyond our borders.

The United Nations (UN), through its myriad treaties, conferences and compacts, seeks to undermine the sovereignty of liberal-democratic nation-states. These UN instruments and agendas also deliberately curb the liberties of the citizenry of these states to determine their own outcomes.

Last December, the UN held migration and climate conferences in Marrakesh, Morocco and in Katowice, Poland respectively.

Thankfully, the Australian Government was sensible enough to reject signing the Global Compact on Migration in Morocco; designed to lay the foundation for open borders through a "right to migration". However, concerningly, the UN's other migration compact—on refugees—has yet to be as keenly rejected by our Government and so remains very much in play.

The UN climate conference in Poland further pushed signatories to the Paris Climate Accord—like Australia—toward a "right to sustainable development". These conferences and their outcomes empower radical green ideology on climate change and till the soil for all the redistributive taxes and stultifying regulations that are intended and will inevitably flow.

Last month's conference in Bonn, Germany, saw the UN climate agenda co-opting rainbow and indigenous politics to further unite globalist, left-wing causes and undermine the freedoms of the individual in favour of "woke" identity groups.

On another domestic front, over the last decade, we have seen the atrocious free speech cases around section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA). These involved Queensland University of Technology students, the late Bill Leak (and in a similar scenario Herald Sun cartoonist, Mark Knight), Andrew Bolt, Sonia Kruger and Samantha Armytage.

In each of these cases, someone was able to take offence at what had been either said, drawn or written, file a basic complaint to the Race Discrimination Commissioner of the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) —either openly or anonymously—and have that complaint enthusiastically taken up by the Commissioner. The respondent was then dragged through copious lawfare often without the complainant further impacted (even known).

Under section 18C of the RDA, the process imposed on the respondent has become the punishment. Such capacity for hit-and-run offence-taking invites vexatious, effortless complaints that target and silence political opponents. Any PC identity group protected by such legal rights and processes can weaponise the system to take out its opponents as well as shield other groups from that opponent's scrutiny and criticism (for example, Andrew Bolt).

The section 18C cases have had a chilling effect on speech and expression in the indigenous, immigration and multicultural space. So much so that real problems, valid criticisms, necessary critiques and likely solutions cannot be freely discussed as the threat of lawfare—for commentary which falls far short of defamation, libel and incitement to violence—looms large.

Worse, at the last election, Mr Shorten's Labor opposition was proposing to:

Proposals like this will not remain dormant for long. They will be dusted off and proposed again.

That is why we, as Australians, need to more explicitly define and protect our unalienable freedoms in law; to stop the encroachment of other rights being defined and enforced, particularly those favouring PC identity groups and their activists.

This Bill will help to challenge lawmaking mindsets and practices that too readily tamper with and restrict our unalienable freedoms. This Bill puts freedom first; it will ensure that politicians explain how proposed legislation protects our inalienable freedoms and ensures their protection is given priority over other human rights.

Some rights advocates may claim rights evolve; however, if that is the case, rights are cannibalising each other. Some key rights are unalienable and essential to the human condition. Adding ever more rights is nonsensical; Parliament must ring-fence Australia's key freedoms.

Governments must be made to justify any erosion of our fundamental freedoms and rights if we are to maintain sanctity of the individual and, on a national scale, our sovereignty.

I commend this Bill to the Senate.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.