Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Protests have played a major positive role in Australia's history, and when we come together to speak up for the voiceless, to stand for justice and to protect our environment, we can bring about real change. The Criminal Code Amendment (Agricultural Protection) Bill 2019 is not about animal rights activism; it's an attack on our right to protest. It's an attack on our right to be able to come together and achieve real change. I protested as part of the Franklin blockade. I was a leader in the East Gippsland forest campaign. These were incredible moments, working with others in the community to protect our precious natural environment and to make a real difference. Today, there are national parks on the Errinundra Plateau and the magnificent Rodger River forests that are protected because of our campaigns. South-west Tasmania is World Heritage and the Franklin River is protected. That incredible natural heritage is safe because of our protests and is being preserved for future generations.

Protesters have brought about positive change throughout Australian history in a whole range of areas, not just environment protests. There are plenty of those protests, of course. There's the antinuclear movement, the March in March and so many more. Yes, many of these protests are on public land, and so they won't be directly impacted by this bill. But sometimes protests are on private land, and sometimes it's not just animal rights activists, as legitimate as their activism usually is, and it's not just environmentalists. Sometimes, in fact, it's farmers who are protesting. In 1985, for example, 45,000 farmers gathered on the lawns of Parliament House to protest. Lock the Gate is an alliance of over 120,000 supporters, including farmers, and we support their right to protest against fracking and to protect their farmland from the impact of fracking. If these farmers were protesting, if they were potentially trespassing on other private land, they would be affected by this bill and the draconian penalties that are in this bill.

In the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee report on this bill, the Labor Party acknowledged in their comments that there are multiple instances of farmers protesting in more recent years. In 2011, Ballarat farmers protesting about lower potato prices drove their tractors to the McCain factory in Wendouree. Warrnambool farmers staged protests over low milk prices in 2013. In 2014 a Coonamble farmer locked himself to a gate to disrupt Santos's coal seam gas operations in the Pilliga forest. Yes, these were on agricultural land. These are the sorts of protests, these are the sorts of actions—to protect our rights, to protect our environment, to protect the health of our community into the future—that are going to be drastically impacted by the measures in this bill.

Another area which is potentially affected by this bill is action that unions and workers and concerned people may take about agriculture labourers who are being exploited, people on temporary work visas—and, Deputy President, you and I were on a committee together, looking at the exploitation of people on temporary work visas—who are often holed up in incredibly poor-quality accommodation, being exploited dawn to dusk, working long, long hours in those horticultural operations absolutely outside the law. Potentially, anybody that wanted to put a spotlight on that sort of activity would be caught up by this law. If unions sent out an email to their workers to say, 'Why don't you come and have a look at what's going on here?' and if there's an attempt to gather evidence about what's going on here and, to do so, a need to trespass on private land to shine a light, to gather that evidence to see the levels of exploitation that are going on, those activities will be caught up by this draconian bill.

In this debate, Labor have made some excellent contributions, picking up on the concerns that they have about this bill. I call upon the Labor Party to join with us in trying to stop this bill, this outrageous piece of legislation, here in this Senate. Labor's second reading amendment notes, in fact, that there are 'a range of potential unintended consequences that could flow from the operation of new criminal offences contained in this bill', and 'calls on the government to carefully monitor the operation of the new laws'. We need to be doing more than this. This is bad legislation. This legislation needs to be stopped. If we had Labor joining the Greens and Centre Alliance and other crossbench senators here, we could stop this legislation in its tracks. We know that this government wants to attack our rights. We know that they have got a history of attacking protesters and attacking our civil rights, but we need the support of other parts of this Senate to stop this bad legislation in its tracks.

Senator McKim has spoken about the concerns we have with this bill from a legislative perspective, and the Law Council of Australia has raised significant concerns about whether this bill impinges on the implied freedom of political communications. There are concerns about the proportionality of this legislation, because there are already laws that prevent trespassing. When people trespass on private land, they know the risks they face. They know there's the potential that they will be caught. They know there's the potential that they will be charged. They know they may have to 'have their day in court' to explain why they took that action, and they know that, in court, there are potentially consequences for their actions. We think that those existing trespass laws strike a good balance and are adequate.

As I have noted, these laws, potentially, will impact upon farmers wanting to take action to ensure that their rights are protected. We of course support the rights to safety and security of all farmers, as we do for all members of our community.

Sustainable farming is fundamental to food security, environmental sustainability and climate change mitigation and adaptation. We, as the Greens, support farmers. We know the environment that they operate in and we know how central they are to a healthy Australia in providing the food that we all rely upon. That is why, at the last election, we announced $100 million in funding to drought-affected communities and a reversing of the coalition's cuts to Landcare.

But this is not a bill about farmers. It's a bill about weakening our civil and political rights. It's a bill about weakening the power of non-government organisations and activists and taking away their voice. This bill undermines a set of fundamental rights without doing anything meaningful to protect farmers. That is why the Greens are opposing this legislation.