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

Today I rise to pay tribute to the authors of the Declaration of Independence. Tomorrow it will be 248 years since that magnificent document was signed. I think it is something that all people of the free world—especially those of us who believe in democracy, accountability and transparency—should reflect on. By putting their pen to that paper, the authors of that document risked their lives. I'm not sure if many people realise that. The American Revolutionary War continued right through to 1781, so, when these founding fathers put their pen to paper, they risked their lives to fight for what they believed in.

What I like about the American Revolution is that it's actually a manifestation of the European Enlightenment. The European Enlightenment believed that power should come from the people. It sought to overturn the hereditary rights of kings and queens, whereby power came from the top down, and instead sought to introduce a system whereby power would come from the people. That is something that we should continually reflect on.

In my time as a senator I have come to appreciate this document more and more, because I realise how hard it is to change entrenched systems. It has to be said that sometimes people have to rise up and push back against the system. That's something I want to reflect on. We see this all the time at the moment, with various bureaucracies that seem to not want to be accountable to the people.

Yesterday I read an article in the Courier Mail by a guy called Mike O'Connor. He was talking about a petition that was signed by thousands of Queenslanders asking the Queensland government to provide the health advice that was used to lock people down throughout the COVID pandemic. Despite the fact that day in, day out for almost two years we were told that the Premier—and all other Premiers; it wasn't just in Queensland—was relying on this advice, the health minister of the day had to come out and say they didn't actually have any paperwork or documentation to back up the health advice that was used to lock down people. That's one of many examples of what I call the health machine.

After reading that article yesterday, I read another article from an American columnist this morning. He was talking about how he's slightly bothered by the fact that about a month ago two missiles were sent into Russia to take out their early detection nuclear signals, to pick up whether or not they were going to be attacked by nuclear weapons. As this columnist goes on to say, this wasn't approved by Congress; nor was it approved by the White House. As he says, someone in the bowels of the bureaucracy basically decided to lob a couple of missiles into Russia and hope for the best. His concern is that he's not quite sure that the founders of the American Declaration of Independence believe that these people who are unaccountable ought to be making decisions so important as this.

Earlier this week I was at the spillover estimates hearing for the CSIRO. I wanted to ask some question about the GenCost report. Lo and behold, Paul Graham, the author of the GenCost report, and Peter Mayfield—two of the senior CSIRO executives—didn't even bother turning up. So the CSIRO CEO was left there by himself, and when I wanted to ask him questions about the capacity of wind farms and what I consider to be flawed modelling used in the GenCost report, all he could say was, 'I will take it on notice.'

Time and time again we are seeing these bodies that are basically not representative of democracy—they should be representative but they're not—not being held to account. Democracy is all about accountability and transparency. Indeed there's a famous saying by a Roman philosopher: who will guard the guardians? That is the question I put to you today on the soon-to-be anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence. Who will guard the guardians? For the last three or four decades, we have been seeing a decline in the level of accountability and transparency in governments across the Western world. I believe that is destroying confidence in our political system.

But I say this to you, the people out there: I hear from many of you every day, and you often raise lots of concerns. One of the questions I often get is, 'Why is the government doing this?' The reason why the government is doing this is that we lack the spirit of those founding fathers who were prepared to stand up and fight for what they believed in. It's not good enough to keep shouting at the clouds or sharing posts on social media and expect to get a different outcome. You have to actually get involved with the political process. Democracy is a grassroots movement, and it is only as good as how active those people are in regard to the political process. I often say to those people who are disenfranchised, 'Are you a part of a political party?' They'll go: 'Oh, no. I'll never join a political party. I don't trust the political parties.' I'll respond to them, and sometimes it's quite abrupt and I think they're surprised by my abruptness. I'll say: 'You're a part of the problem. If this stuff is eating you up inside and you're not happy with the way your government is run, you have to actively get involved.'

It won't be easy. The founding fathers in the American War of Independence signed that document in 1776, but the war didn't end until 1789. I'll reflect on World War II because we should also acknowledge the supreme sacrifice of the American naval forces, who actually went a long way to saving Australia in the Pacific as well. Those guys fought for their country. They were prepared to fight for what they believed in. So I urge people out there today to consider that, if they're not happy with the level or quality of the government they're getting, they should actually get involved. It's become too easy in this world to stay at home with in-house entertainment. You've got your iPhone and your Netflix et cetera. It's too easy to stay at home and not go out and not get active. If you don't get active, the grassroots movements get smaller and smaller and the vested interests get bigger and bigger. The last thing we want to see is the vested interests, the entrenched interests and the elites take over.

So I say to you people today: don't be afraid of the new world order. This is the new world order. Democracy is the new world order. It was a new world order put in place by the founding fathers of the American Revolution and the American Declaration of Independence, and it's been worked on ever since. We had the Chartists in 1840, the French Revolution in the 1790s and the suffragettes in the early 1900s. It has been a continual work in progress. But I fear that if you don't get involved and you sit back on your social media and get too swamped by today's luxuries, and we do have many luxuries, the entrenched interests and the elites will once again take over and tyranny rather than democracy will rule.