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

I can't believe that in the year of 2023, in the month of March, I am standing up here tonight to have to speak about the integrity of our democracy. It is just beggar's belief. But, then again, that is the type of government that we have in power at the moment. It isn't interested in representing the rights of all individuals. No, what they want to do is divide the population by race, and they want to be sneaky about how they go about it. They're not going to conduct this referendum by normal rules. No, as usual they've got to hide and basically have no transparency and no accountability. This is the recurring theme of my time in government and Labor's time in government: with the bureaucrats, they never want to disclose anything. It is secret after secret after secret.

What is this referendum all about? It is designed to give a class of people a voice that they already have. We have a voice in this country. It's called the ballot box. It is the fundamental bulwark of Western democracies. It has made many countries prosperous, based on the fact that every individual gets a say. What have we got over on the other side of the chamber? Are they interested in wanting to preserve the rights of every individual, the dignity and worth of every individual? Do they want to empower the individual? No, they do not.

The other side of the chamber is interested in one thing and one thing only. That is command and control. They do that through three means. Number one, of course, is Marxism itself. That is where they to want to divide the world by race, by gender, by whatever you can think of. It is always us against them. Instead of just coming out and saying that there is only one race, the human race, and that we should all work together for the betterment of our children—no, that is not what the other side of the chamber are interested in. They are only interested in division, so that they can distract us with superfluous issues like the Voice at a time when we have much more pressing issues, like the cost of living.

We have Australians who can't find houses—can't buy a house or rent a house. We have other Australians who are in mortgage stress because we have an out-of-control RBA that has no idea about monetary policy. We have got people still locked down who can't get work because of COVID mandates, and here we are wasting time on a Monday about a bill that is designed to undermine the very essence of democracy itself.

We've already got a National Indigenous Australians Agency that has over $2 billion a year that is spent through it. It employs people that cost up to $300 million a year. So tell me this: what is it that this agency can't do that a change to the Constitution will? Why do those opposite actually want to change the Constitution? Heaven forbid that this ever gets into the hands of an activist High Court Judge. We well remember the impacts of the 1983 Franklin dam decision, where a High Court judge undermined the Constitution. I'm not talking about saving the environment; I'm talking about how the court ruled that foreign treaties could override powers of the state government. That was an attack on democracy itself.

This is an administration issue. By all means, let's close the gap; let's provide essential services. I touched on it in my maiden speech. You hear me talk ad nauseam about improving essential services, building infrastructure—dams, power stations, roads, rail, ports, airports and telecommunications—especially for those people in the regions. That is what the role of government is. It is to build things and to serve people. It is not the role of government to regulate people to within an inch of their lives, and it is most certainly not role of government to try to divide people on any identity or every identity you can think of. That is what this referendum is all about, and that is why Labor is being so sneaky—very, very, very sneaky.

If you look at the Constitution, you will see we already have a section—section 51(xxvi)—that says government has powers with respect to making laws on race. So, yet again, I ask the chamber and I ask those on the other side: why are we wasting millions of dollars on a referendum when we need to be focused on those things that matter? We need to be focused on providing essential services to all people, regardless of race. Let's focus on building hospitals, building schools and providing better water supply or better transport or whatever it takes to lift the standard of living in all regions of Australia. That is what we should be focused on.

Instead, all day today, we have been winding ourselves up like the Tasmanian devil, in a spin over the rules of this referendum, which is basically dealing with something that shouldn't even come into it. I note the questioning of my colleague Senator Antic in estimates, where he asked what the definition of an Aboriginal was. Of course, he got the usual reply; somehow, in asking a very simple question, fundamental to this referendum, he was accused of being a racist. And that is what we're up against here. This side of the chamber wants to deal in facts. It wants to deal in the output of deliverables—real services that make a difference to people in their everyday lives.

People don't go around the world looking at people through the lens of race. We're way past that. This is Australia. We're a proud multicultural nation, brought together by wrongdoings, whatever, in the past. We've all come from—