Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Hansard source

If you want to champion against discrimination, you don't want One Nation. One Nation wants autistic children to be taken out of public schools because they're a 'strain' on the rest of the class. People don't choose to be autistic. Taking them out of school is discrimination, and One Nation just loves it. One Nation wants a ban on any immigration from majority Muslim countries, even if the person isn't Muslim. People don't choose what country they were born in. That is discrimination. One Nation has no problem with that either. One Nation is opposed to same-sex marriage. People don't choose to be gay. That is discrimination. One Nation has no issue with that either. One Nation are not fighting against discrimination; One Nation seek to profit from it. It's just a fund-raising exercise for them. That's all this is.

This bill is supposed to be about fighting discrimination against people who haven't been vaccinated against COVID-19. The only people who need protection from discrimination are the people who can't receive the vaccination for reasons outside of their control. They shouldn't be discriminated against. But if you're able to get vaccinated and you choose not to, 'discrimination' is the wrong word. That's not discrimination. You have freedom to make a choice but, if you make a choice, those choices have consequences.

You can't call every consequence of choice a discrimination. If you get behind the wheel of a car and drive at twice the speed limit, you may be comfortable taking that risk with your safety, but you'd be putting other peoples' lives at risk, and you don't have the right to do that. And you will more than likely lose your licence. You are not being discriminated against. If you chose to do something that puts other peoples' lives at risk, you will be held accountable for that choice; it is that simple. That's what we're talking about here. People who don't get the vaccine are making a choice. You have a choice; we all have choices to make. We all get a choice. You're making a choice that means you're more likely to get COVID and you're more likely to spread it to someone else. That is your choice; it is your right. I want to make that clear, and I support that choice.

But you don't get to decide how the rest of Australia responds to that choice. You can't force someone else to act a certain way, the same as you, because of your freedom to choose. That's not how we do things in this country. We have freedom of speech in Australia, but you can't stop people reacting to what you say with your freedom of speech. We have freedom of assembly, but you can't stop the rest of us from calling you out if you're being disruptive and rude. Having freedom to choose isn't the same as having freedom to avoid the consequences of that choice. Some might say that if you're vaccinated because you're required to be in order to keep your job, then you've been forced to get vaccinated. But that's not right; that's not being truthful at all. That is not correct. If you want to work with vulnerable people, you need to get a National Police Check. If you want to work with kids, you have to have a Working With Children Check. That is the way it is, and we do that to keep people safe. How about that? We put others before ourselves.

You can decide not to choose those checks. No-one's forcing you. But if you don't do them, you can't work where you want to work; it's as simple as that. That is the way it is. If you want to work as a cabbie, you need a licence to drive a cab. People without licences are not being discriminated against. If you want to work in aged care, you need to have a flu vaccine. That rule was in place before COVID-19 was even a twinkle in a Chinese bat's eye, for goodness sake! That is the way it is.

You have a right to choose. You don't have a right to put vulnerable people's lives at risk. You don't have that right—and you shouldn't have that right. You don't have the right to go into an aged-care home unvaccinated and risk starting a COVID outbreak among the elderly. I have constituents with autoimmune conditions who run businesses. If they're forced to serve unvaccinated customers, they'll have to choose between risking their lives or shutting down their businesses. You don't have the right to force them to make that choice. We have pubs in Hobart that will have to close if just one person with COVID walks into them. Those pub owners should be able to choose to protect themselves and their staff, and they should be able to say, 'I can't afford to have an unvaccinated person in here.' They're already on their knees. They should not be forced to pay for another person's choice to not get the vaccine. This is the point: nobody has the right to make someone's life less safe. That's not what freedoms mean; it's not what freedoms mean at all. You have the freedom to make your own choices. Everyone else has the freedom to respond to your choices, and you don't get to control that, no matter how much you might want to.

I get that some people have a lot to fear about the vaccine. I understand that, for some, getting that needle in your arm is hard choice to make. It's good to ask questions about how the vaccine was developed, where it comes from and how we know whether it's safe. I've asked plenty of those questions myself. I put them to the Department of Health and I put them to the TGA, and I wouldn't have it any other way. That's our democratic process in this country. The problem is that politicians like Senator Hanson and Senator Roberts are using people's fear to boost their own election campaigns, and they're using fear to make money. That's what this is about, from One Nation. They're not being straight with you people out there—not straight at all. It's all about cash, it's all about power and it's all about One Nation's seats. That's all this is: a grab for cash and seats from One Nation. I reckon a lot of their supporters would think twice if they saw the absolute hypocrisy of these two politicians. Honestly, One Nation pretends to be on the side of the people, but they are happy to tell fibs to their own voters if it means they can make a quick buck or two.

Take this example: Senator Hanson went on Sky News and said the TGA had published data saying that a whole bunch of people had died from the COVID-19 vaccine. The journalist pulled her up straightaway and told her, 'That's wrong.' The journalist called her out for misleading Sky's viewers. And do you know what happened? Senator Hanson backed down. She admitted that she had the facts wrong, that she'd have to look at it again. But the very next day she went right back to saying the same crap anyway, like nothing had happened—like that's acceptable behaviour in this country. That's leadership, is it, Senator Hanson? My goodness. I've got things wrong in the past. I accept that; I'll admit it. I'll fix it and move it on. That's how it works. If you get it wrong, say you got it wrong and stand by that.

What sort of person accepts they're wrong but just keeps saying the wrong thing anyway? What sort of person does that? Let's be clear: I don't want people being forced to get vaccinated. I don't think we should ever do that. But I think there's a world of difference between opposing that and supporting this damn bill. This bill says that the freedom of the unvaccinated is more important than the freedom of the vaccinated. Really? It says that the nine in 10 Australian adults who have gone out and got the jab don't get a choice themselves, that we don't have a choice to keep COVID out of our worksites, our aged-care homes, our pubs, our cafes and our houses and away from our kids. It says that some people should be allowed to make consequence-free decisions, that some people should be able to yell 'Fire!' in a crowded room and get away with it scot-free.

I don't think so, not on my watch. Here's the thing. Being held accountable for your own actions isn't called discrimination. It's called being—you wouldn't believe it—a goddamn bloody adult! That's right; it's being an adult. It's putting others before yourself, and that's what this country is supposed to be about. We don't have lockdowns and border restrictions because state premiers love discrimination. That's rubbish. We have them because state premiers don't want people dying, because they don't want to be playing Russian roulette with their own people's lives. That is why they're doing it.

One Nation is the champion of the right for unvaccinated COVID-carrying mainlanders to come to Tasmania and create an outbreak. I don't think so! It's not going to happen under my watch, and I doubt very much it's going to happen under Peter Gutwein's watch. We're not going to stand for it. One Nation are the enemy of health workers and officials who would have to clean up after the outbreak. Everybody pays for COVID-19. Every day that we have to deal with lockdowns and restrictions is a day when a business goes bust, a family breaks down in despair and a person takes their own life.

The way out of lockdowns and restrictions is vaccination, because there is nothing else on the table. Let's be honest about that. It's how we protect ourselves and it's how we protect each other. It's how we stand together. It's how we fight back. It is the only weapon we have, and we need to do everything we possibly can to keep ourselves safe, our kids safe, our grandchildren safe and our friends and family safe. That's what we need to do, and sometimes sacrifices have to be made.

You are patriots. We should be celebrating vaccinated Australians. You are fighting for our freedoms, to take control of our lives again. That's what you're doing, and good on you! It's a proud day for you today, and so it should be. Good on you for showing the courage to do so. You're the best we have. You are at the frontline fighters. You are displaying the kinds of qualities that make this country the great country it is. That's what it takes: sacrifice.

I was brought up believing in responsibility, to look after people who cannot look after themselves, and that nobody owes you anything. So go out and earn what you want. Go out there and earn it. This bill flies in the face of all of that. That's why I absolutely oppose every bit of it.