Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I withdraw. The fact is that the Greens Party can sit in that corner over there and mock and laugh at the vaccine injured. These people aren't antivaxxers. They believed what the government told them, as I did when I first came to this place. But I can tell you what: there's nothing but a cesspit of lies in this place. The fact is that the Greens Party think that they can just sit there and mock the injured. These people believed in the government.

You want to talk about trust and transparency. Oh, yes, there's Senator Waters again, mocking and going, 'Come on.' Maybe you should pick up the phone. Maybe you people should pick up the phone and talk to some of these people who have been injured.

When we go to the basis, the substance, of this act, the Fair Work Act, this is a public health issue. The idea that businesses in this country can be responsible for the transmission of an airborne virus is just as absurd as the billions of dollars that are getting wasted on the idea that you can control some tiny trace gas in the atmosphere. We are living in the land of the unicorn farmers and intellectual pygmies who are just chasing the impossible dream. Like Sancho Panza chasing the windmills, it is absurd. Yet we stand here today, almost three years after the virus broke out in China or whatever, and we still have these ridiculous mandates in so many places, particularly in private industry, which is what this amendment will address.

They are still being coerced into getting a vaccine. I've literally had three messages in just the last hour about people who are losing their jobs, not in the health sector but in sectors that are outdoors—they have nothing to do. It is absurd, and it needs to stop, because the state of emergency, even at the state government level, has been retracted, yet these people here today do not want to grant people their autonomous right to control what goes into their bodies.

And I might remind members of the LNP that one of our values is the dignity and worth of every individual. We don't believe in multi-patent bargaining, because we recognise that every business is unique, and we think that the employer and the employee should have the first right in deciding what's best for them. That is what we believe in. We believe in empowering individuals to make the decisions that suit their needs the best, and only the individual or the parent of the child can make that decision.

But what we've got here today is typical command and control. We've got the Labor Party and the Greens protecting their own narrative that the government can save us. 'Govern me harder, Daddy!'—that is what these people believe in.