Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a servant to the people of Queensland and of Australia, I rise to speak about every human's highest priority. First, I want to protect Australians from the scourge of terrorism and from those who would destroy our Australian way of life, our culture and our very existence. The aim of this bill, the Counter-Terrorism (Temporary Exclusion Orders) Bill 2019 and the related bill, is to protect us all from those who seek to destroy our culture. Security should be at the heart of what we do in this chamber. As our party leader said just a few minutes ago, the Labor Party and the Greens cannot demonstrate that. But we believe we can.

One Nation strongly supports this bill because it is aimed at complementing and strengthening our security measures and protecting Australians from the risks of imported terrorism. This bill and the related bill ensure there is no rush for those vile men and women who actively supported terrorists in the Middle East conflict in Syria—supporting ISIS, a declared terror organisation—to carry out their violent push to dominate and control innocents around them. That is core. Known for bloody, barbaric murders, rapes of women and children, and mass killings of those who could not recite passages from the Koran, these men and their deadly women supporters do not deserve in any way to be considered innocent Australians abroad. They made a conscious choice to join and support murderers whose aim is to end Western civilisation.

This bill ensures that authorities will have a reasonable amount of time for would-be returnees to be investigated fully, to identify the risks they may pose to the personal safety and security of the Australian people, should these terrorists return. Seriously, how could a reasonable, thinking person want one of these returnees anywhere near our families? What amount of rehabilitation will ever have us believe we are safe anywhere near these terrorists, should they return? There is no way that Pauline Hanson's One Nation will support the spread of these radical beliefs in this country—no way, truly. The Greens are off the planet if they think that these terrorists or their families should be able to come waltzing Matilda back to us, back into the arms of a tolerant and naive Australian community. Should they get away with saying 'Honey, I'm home!'?

The Greens have described this as a bad bill and say they will not support it. They have said that Australian citizens should not have to face the same security of conduct that non-Australian radicals would face. What rubbish! The Greens, and some in Labor, show they are anti-Australian and are thus, like terrorists, anti-human. A terrorist is a terrorist, and we do not want them here. Our view is a strong and clear one: if returnees have left Australia to fight against Australian principles, why should it be easy for them to come back—if they should come back at all?

Terrorism is a real and current threat to Australians and our way of life, and to our security. Since 2001, 73 Australians have been convicted of terrorism-related offences. Fifty of those are currently in jail. About 80 Australian men and women are currently in Syria or Iraq and have fought for or supported Islamic extremist groups. About 100 Australian terrorists received their just deserts, dying for nothing in the dust of a foreign country.

There have been seven attacks and 16 major counterterrorism disruption operations in response to potential-attack planning in Australia. These figures are terrifying in light of the thousands of Australians who would have died as a result of these attacks were they not successfully foiled by our police and security personnel. Vigilance by the government is needed to protect our citizens, and strong laws are necessary to maintain the excellent success rate of Australian counterterrorism measures. Please think about this: one of the scariest statistics related to terrorism in Australia is that Australia's national terrorism threat level is at 'probable'.

Pauline Hanson's One Nation is proud to support this bill. It takes a deservedly tough stance and provides an approach that is clear that, as a country, we take the terrorist threat seriously and are prepared to provide a tough response to ensure people's security. That concern is foremost with Pauline Hanson's One Nation. Please consider these further thoughts: already, dual citizens can have their Australian citizenship revoked providing the government complies with high hurdles. That's already the case. Those who are Australian only cannot have their citizenship revoked under international convention. Although, after listening to people across our state, I know that many Australians—me among them—would like to stop these terrorists returning altogether, they are, in fact, allowed and entitled to return.

This bill enables our immigration and counterterrorism experts to do their job of assessing threats, with the sole purpose of protecting law-abiding Australians. The government cannot stop Australian citizens from returning, yet temporary exclusion orders can delay the return of terrorists until their threat can be adequately assessed and measures put in place to protect the security of ourselves and our families. Government has three primary roles—protecting life, protecting property and protecting freedom. This basic and practical approach has long driven Pauline Hanson's One Nation, and we commend the government for introducing this bill.

Our opponents will claim there are human rights issues. The reality is that opponents put the rights of criminals and terrorists ahead of the rights of law-abiding Australian citizens. I say Australians and their families have a right to safety, peace, freedom and security in our own country. Our Constitution was written at a time when it was assumed that inhabitants of our country were loyal to our country. Sadly, after three decades of the Liberal-Labor duopoly relaxing immigration standards, we now have homegrown and foreign terrorists who want to destroy our country and what our country stands for. Australians who have self-selected themselves out of Australian values to fight for a barbaric political ideology will still have the right to judicial review of the minister's decision. This bill simply ensures that there is a process for managing the return of so-called Australian citizens subject to them complying with reasonable conditions to ensure our security. It is a hardline bill, and we like that. It is a hardline bill because these barbarians have, through their own behaviour and free choices, tossed aside Australian values and the values of Western civilisation.

I'd like to take some time now to discuss the fundamentals of immigration. Having worked briefly in Mount Isa many years ago, I can proudly point to it as a success story. Immigrants from nations all over the world with values similar to and compatible with Australian values are a large part of the success of that once-remote community. Mount Isa generated and continues to generate enormous wealth for the townspeople, the North Queensland region, our state and our nation. Mount Isa proudly exports its products and its world-famous expertise worldwide. It does so because people of many backgrounds have settled and consciously and willingly chosen to assimilate and integrate, after being selected to immigrate based on their ability to assimilate and integrate and to contribute productively. Our country also has a mix of races, and we do not advocate selecting people or in any way treating people separately based on their race. Mount Isa's success was not driven on the basis of race, religion or nationality; yet tens of thousands of immigrants now call Australia home and they have settled in and do us proud. In Pauline Hanson's One Nation, we will discuss race, and we do, yet we will never proclaim one race is superior to another or deserves more than another, because we want one nation. We will never be racist, nor will we let religion decide the policies here.

But let's move on to something separate from race and separate from religion—to ideology. We cannot say that we will not segregate on the basis of ideology, because a significant proportion of immigrants in recent years have tried to change Australian life to meet their ideology and espoused behaviour that threatens this country. For example, they want to suppress women, and they do suppress women. That is not for this country. They want to force women to wear face coverings. That is not for our country. They engage in and support paedophilia, taking child brides. That is not for Australia. They want to stone homosexuals. That is not for Australia. They want to engage in female genital mutilation. That is not for Australia. They want to practise and they want to support Sharia law. That is not for Australia—one law, one nation. They want halal certification at customers' cost—our cost, the cost of everyday shoppers in Coles, Woolies, IGA and the corner store. That is not for Australia. They want to practise polygamy, and they do practise polygamy. That is not for Australia. And they want to support terrorism, and that is not for Australia. And so on.

This ideology amounts to a way of structuring society to control people using control of thought and belief. Like socialism and like communism, it is an ideology. They want to use cruel, physical punishment such as beheading, beating wives, caning, throwing people off buildings and stoning. They use fear, and that is inherent in terrorism. They are the terrorists. These practices that I just listed are contrary to Australian values and to our way of life. The entry to our country of such people pushing a barbaric ideology is the exact opposite of what made Mount Isa successful. It is the exact opposite of what made Australia successful, safe and secure. How can anyone support the entry of people pushing such ideology? Anyone advocating their entry is undermining Australian values and our way of life—undermining Australia and undermining the safety of everyday Australians.

As our party founder, Senator Pauline Hanson, says, 'We do not treat people based on their race or their religion. We put Australians first—one nation.' That is why we advocate, as part of our immigration policy, a travel ban of the type President Trump successfully implemented, preventing entry of immigrants from nations with a proven history of terrorism or violence. Yet the Greens and some elements of Labor appear to put Australia last and certainly behind their love of virtue signalling.

I must express my disgust with parts of Senator Di Natale's speech last night and his stage show—yet another Di Natale stage show with his confected rage. He's putting terrorists before Australia's security. His interest is not to protect Australians; his show is to steal Labor votes. It's standard Greens practice: fabricate a problem, create a victim, then create an oppressor, then create punishment and then, to top it off, enhance political correction to silence opposition. They label people 'racists' or 'deniers' or whatever. Why? It's simply because they lack the hard data, they lack the facts and they lack a coherent argument, and so they return to labels. Whenever we hear someone being smeared by the Greens, it confirms that they do not have an argument or facts. Sadly, as the Greens move further left, the Labor Party moves like its shadow with them. But, sadly, the Liberals then try to seek the Greens' preferences.

This is the sorry tale of what passes for governance in our country. And who pays the price? It's everyday Aussies across our country. Who wins? The UN wins. Meanwhile, our vote grows because we have the guts to say what people are thinking—the truth. Failed Liberal-Labor policies on water, immigration, tax, infrastructure—trace them all to the loony, antihuman Greens and their UN masters. The pattern of fabricating problems, victims and PC is a classic UN-Soros practice.

I take this opportunity to explore the three main parts of governance—stewardship, governance itself and trusteeship. Stewardship of government assets means looking at cost of living and managing the economy properly, not the way we're seeing it being managed at the moment by making budgets to appeal to virtue signallers. Energy policy is destroying the fundamentals of our economy. On tax, multinationals are getting away scot-free. Immigration numbers are climbing out of all proportion. On security, we advocate something that Labor and Liberals need to look at: the quantity of people coming into this country needs to be cut dramatically, and the quality needs to be reassured—that is, the number and the mix of immigrants need to be properly restored. Governance, secondly, is providing for the future with a vision. That means cutting immigration numbers till our infrastructure can catch up and we get our infrastructure for water and energy. The third aspect is trusteeship of our values. This is arguably the most important of all, because culture is the most powerful determinant of productivity. Whether it be a football club, an international company, a small business or a parliament, culture is the most important determinant of productivity and prosperity, and culture is being mismanaged in this parliament.

Focusing on security involves three things. One is secure borders. Senator Pauline Hanson and I complimented the government three years ago for what they had done with our armed forces to ensure secure borders. What they have done, and what we have helped them to do, is to ensure that those borders are kept secure against the undermining of the Centre Alliance, the Labor Party and the Greens. Secondly, it involves personal security against terrorism. Thirdly, it involves economic security, and people seem to have forgotten that: energy policies, water policies, taxation policies and foreign policies.

We support immigration, at greatly reduced numbers. We want zero net immigration, and we want immigration of people consistent with Australian values and laws—people who are willing and able to assimilate and integrate, to uphold our values and our way of life. After decades of the Liberal-Labor duopoly destroying our country's productive capacity, what we in Pauline Hanson's One Nation want for Australia is a productive, safe, secure nation with its productive capacity restored. That's not too much to ask.

At night, we don't lock our homes because we hate the people outside; we lock our homes because we love the people inside. Government's primary role is to protect the safety, property and freedom of people already inside Australia. Pauline Hanson's One Nation supports this bill, which protects constitutional rights and the primacy of safety for everyday Australians and for families. Government's primary role is to ensure security, and that is why we will be supporting this bill.