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

I'll take that interjection, thanks, Senator Pratt. It's good to know that you don't think Australia's a multicultural country. But we have all come from persecutions. I've got Irish ancestry. The maternal side of my family came from the potato famine in 1851. My great, great, great grandfather—however many 'greats' I've got to say—was picked up on the streets of Dublin in 1826 and sent out here to build Paramatta Road. But, apart from paying out on my Pommy mates in the pub, do I go on about? No. The point is that a rising tide will lift all boats. The best thing that we should be striving for is prosperity and unity, not division and poverty, which is what identity politics will give us, because poverty will distract us from those things that really matter, like family, and respect for the dignity and worth of every individual, regardless of their background, their race, their gender or whatever, because it doesn't matter. It is none of our business as politicians. As politicians and as bureaucrats we need to get out of people's lives. People are sick and tired of the government telling them what to do and regulating them or, on the other hand, being fear merchants about things like COVID, climate change, the race division—fear and loathing.

This stuff has to stop. This stuff has to stop, and we need to get on as one country, as one race, and work together to provide better services. We have an enormous number of bureaucrats involved in providing services to Aboriginals and their communities, so why can't they close the gap? That is the question to ask. What is it that we have to do to close the gap in regional Australia, in whatever community that may be, and across the entire nation? What we should be striving to do in this chamber when we make laws is to actually lift all the boats of all the people by providing services to the Australian people.

I can tell you we won't be doing that this year while we're wasting time debating the intricacies of a referendum that is designed to permanently divide this country along the lines of race. It is abhorrent. It is completely abhorrent that, in the 21st century, this Labor government has sought to bring about a referendum to undo the work of the great 1966 referendum brought about by the Liberal Party. The Labor Party is trying to tear a wedge in this country, and it is completely wrong. They're playing games.

I read today, for example, that the Australian Electoral Commission is now mandatorily signing up people to the electoral roll without even informing them. If that report in the Australian is true—it came up this afternoon—that is alarming. That has got red flags for electoral fraud. I'm not sure if that's a part of this bill, but you don't just go around signing up people; they have to sign themselves up. Let's face it; what government agency hasn't made a stuff-up when it comes to managing databases? It's signing people up without their consent, without their knowledge. There are shades of compulsory superannuation here, where Keating ripped out—it started off at two per cent, but it's gone to 12 per cent of people's wages. There was never a referendum there. There are shades of the COVID mandate, forcing an untested jab into people's arms. Now we're going to sign people up to the electoral roll without them even knowing it. This just smacks of control and division.

Of course, this is what we have come to expect from those on the other side of the chamber, who aren't interested in peace and prosperity and unity. No, no, no. These people want to control you by fear and loathing and division. That's the modus operandi of the Australian Labor Party, backed by their mates in the Greens party—basically a watermelon party: Greens one day, Marxist the next, green/red. It's very, very scary. Let me tell you that this side of the chamber isn't going to allow our country to be divided by race, or fear and loathing.