Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this urgency motion. This debate is in no way a debate about free speech. Australians have free speech. It's in no way a debate about the right to protest. I've been involved in plenty of protests. This is a debate about political leadership and about whether the office of Prime Minister is going to be used for political leadership. I listened carefully to Senator McDonald, and I have to say that, until this moment, I had no idea how degraded the Nationals commitment to political liberalism has become.

Former senator Ron Boswell recognised the threat to Australian democracy that the One Nation Party posed. He fought them and opposed them right through Queensland, in this place and at the ballot box. The modern National Party just seeks to incorporate those views. It doesn't recognise the threat to Australian democracy that's posed by the kinds of views being put out there in a systematic way by Mr Christensen.

Mr Christensen, in the material that he propagates around the place, supports violent extremism. He cosies up to people who—let's call a spade a spade—are fascists. They are a threat to democracy. I had a look at Mr Christensen's website before coming in here. He caught support from some of the darkest recesses of far-Right movements overseas. He has a page on there that says 'Reject the Great Reset'. It's got references, in the usual anti-Semitic tropes used by these extremists, to poor old Mr George Soros; I don't know what he ever did to offend these people. It's the usual anti-Semitic tropes—'new world order', 'global elites'. It's the kind of terminology that, on that side of this place and in Mr Morrison's office, has become a political plaything for people who don't recognise the seriousness of the threat and don't understand their political responsibility.

This is not about free speech; people can say whatever they like. This is about whether Mr Morrison is prepared to act in the national interest, in the interests of Australian democracy and in the interests of what used to be the party that represented the liberalist trend in Australian political thinking. It has now drifted to the far Right, not become more conservative. Traditional conservatives—former leaders, former prime ministers, former Liberal leaders, former Nationals leaders—are repulsed. John McEwen would be repulsed by the ideology being propagated by this group.

In the United Kingdom a Labour MP was murdered by people professing the same ideology being propagated by Mr Christensen. More recently a Conservative MP was murdered doing their day-to-day work as a politician, because people like Mr Johnson in the United Kingdom have decided, in desperate political circumstances, that it's okay to propagate far-Right political conspiracy theories and mobilise people around those ideals to try and damage your political opponents. These things have consequences in our democracy. Nobody is arguing that people don't have the right to protest, nobody is arguing that people don't have the capacity for free speech; what we're after is political leadership.

Outside, of course, there are people who have different views. More people should listen to the science about the COVID-19 pandemic, about the important role that vaccinations must play in keeping us all safe and about the role of the public health measures. There has been enormous pain in our community as a result of the public health measures that have had to be taken, in no small part because of the failure of Mr Morrison to deliver vaccines on time, to get rapid antigen tests out there and to ensure there's personal protective equipment in aged care. These are the things that have driven the pandemic and made things harder for ordinary Australians. But what we've got out the front, which Senator Rennick and Senator Antic and Mr Christensen are urging on with all the others down there, is a group of fascists and fringe dwellers and some fixated persons. A person was arrested out there with a sawn-off rifle last week, and there are people over here, and Mr Morrison, who think that's not a problem. What does it take for the modern Liberal Party, and what passes for the National Party these days, to take these things seriously? When people assemble outside parliaments with nooses, it has consequences. It's not reasonable debate; it's a threat of violence. I saw yesterday what happened to the British Labour leader, with loops and extremists chasing him down the street. The good work of the protective services in the United Kingdom is what saved him from a very serious assault.

The truth is that Australians do not support this madness. They have voted with their feet. Well over 90 per cent have received two doses of the vaccine. Australians trust scientists, they trust healthcare professionals and they trust each other. But Mr Morrison has failed to stand up to the extremists on his own back bench, and we know why. In one of his occasional truth bombs—we had another one last week, via text—Mr Joyce made it clear why Mr Morrison won't take Mr Christensen on: it's because Mr Morrison relies upon Mr Christensen's vote over there in the House, and Mr Joyce relies upon Mr Christensen's vote in the Nationals party room. There's not an ounce of political courage or principle left in this Prime Minister—no courage and no principle. He has kowtowed to extremists and kowtowed to violent political extremism, and, as a consequence, it's become more and more prominent in the Liberal Party.

Mr Christensen still sits in the party room. He still has a vote in the caucus, and those opposite, who know this man much better than we do, have known for a very long time how dangerously off course he has gone. I've said it; I wrote to Minister Andrews in November last year, and to the Australian Federal Police, when I saw threats of political violence—direct threats—made on Mr Christensen's Telegram account. There have been crickets from Minister Andrews and crickets from Mr Morrison. They have no capacity to stand up. And what do we have revealed today? Mr Christensen is spending tens of thousands of dollars of taxpayers' money, public money, every month—hundreds of thousands of dollars over his term in office—to propagate extremist political ideology, to make things worse and to undermine the public health message. Yet all we have here, and what I anticipate we're about to have, is some quisling defence based on free speech, as if anybody is arguing here about free speech.

We just want a prime minister who puts the national interest first, puts Australia first and puts Australian democracy first. I'm afraid we're going to have to wait for an election before we get one.