Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

The government will not be supporting this motion. This motion was nearly identical to another motion put forward by Senator Hanson and rightly rejected by the Senate in September last year. It was nearly identical until it was amended in what appears to me to be a dirty deal and an accommodation with the Liberal and National parties—a little bit of more of that later.

This motion reflects Senator Hanson's disregard of the importance of native title, which is the law in Australia. It is the law in Australia. It is not a motion put forward in any way in good faith. Indeed, I've watched Senator Hanson's approach to these questions over many years now. She says things that are deliberately offensive. She says them in order to create offence. She says them in order to create social harm. She says them in order to create hurt. That's what she is deliberately, maliciously doing in order to further what she has calculated—with others, no doubt—is in the partisan interests of dividing Australians and trying to create a narrow partisan advantage for herself. I wonder why the Liberals and Nationals sign up for this. I wonder why. It is a barely concealed attempt to undermine the native title system, the whole system, and everybody in this place should see it for what it is and oppose it.

You could hear in Senator Hanson's contribution—even if you're not capable of reading the motion itself and seeing it in its context, you could hear it in her contribution—her disdain for Aboriginal Australia and her contempt for the history and the culture. There is already an inquiry into the native title system underway. It's a good-faith inquiry, commissioned by the Attorney-General and conducted by the Australian Law Reform Commission. It is a comprehensive inquiry which covers the future of the native title system and explores ways in which it may be made to work better for native titleholders, for Aboriginal communities and for the whole community. It will be conducted by experts in consultation with First Nations people. That's how you go about an inquiry into native title. It's not through a stunt cooked up by Senator Hanson and Senator Cash.

It's been over 30 years since the commencement of the Native Title Act. Native title is a critical part of broader efforts to rectify past injustices in this country and to ensure that First Nations people receive the recognition they deserve. The government is investing in improvements to the native title system. In the 2024 budget, the government committed an additional $20.8 million over four years to improve the native title system. As part of this package, $12.4 million is going to the Federal Court of Australia to increase judicial resourcing and expand the delivery of its successful First Nations led case management and mediation model, $4½ million will go to the Native Title Tribunal to help prescribed bodies corporate and native title holders resolve disputes, and a further $3.3 million is being provided to the Federal Court and the Native Title Tribunal to ensure the vital records provided to them in native title matters—maps, genealogical charts, recordings of songs and dances—are preserved appropriately for future generations.

Today native title is recognised over almost half of Australia's land mass, and I say to Senator Hanson it is the law. I know that in the extremist fringe of Australian politics there is contempt for our law and for our institutions, but it is the law. It is one of our institutions. It matters for the social and economic and legal fabric of Australia. How development projects occur on country and how traditional owners can participate in, lead and share in the benefits of those projects is more important than ever. Indeed, the Prime Minister had quite a lot to say about this and about the way the government would approach economic opportunity for Aboriginal communities on traditional land just a few weeks ago.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people deserve to maintain a distinctive cultural, spiritual, physical and economic relationship with their land and their waters. You would think that these principles are so mainstream, so well understood in this parliament that the Liberals and Nationals would refuse to accept the quisling accommodation with the One Nation party that they are engaged in. They have a choice on questions like this. Quite often resolutions, motions, are moved in daily motions here, and there is nothing more hollow than the sound of a resolution or a motion passing or not passing this place on some foreign policy question. It has no consequence at all. But words in these questions have consequences, and the position of a party that pretends to be a party of alternative government on these questions is very important indeed.

We've seen the extension of extremism, the wacky and dangerous ideas, taking hold in sections of the Liberal and National parties across the aisle here in the Senate. Older generations of conservatives would never have tolerated this. Serious, actual conservatives who care about democratic institutions and the law and tradition and history would never tolerate this extremism. But the extremists are accreting their way into the Liberal and National parties, and we see it in here every day of the week. The old conservatives would have recognised the political danger of drifting away from mainstream Australia. They would have understood that ordinary people in the street want governments that act in their interests and aren't controlled by whack jobs, extremists and cookers. That is the group that is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And they're not just on the coalition backbench; they're starting to play a role in the coalition's political decision-making. It's the extremism that we see in the way that Senator Rennick approaches issues like child care, climate science and energy policy. I look forward to hearing from him about chemtrails and lizard people some time soon. There are the kinds of people who hand out leaflets from Senator Hanson and her party.

Mr Joyce, in the other place, is tilting at windmills around the community, opposing economic development in regional towns. He's out there, with diminishingly small crowds, I have to say, talking about bullets and ballots—bullets and ballots. What is wrong with this bloke? What is wrong with him? But, more seriously, what is wrong with the Liberal and National parties that they do not see the danger and they do not act? What you get from Mr Joyce is a mealy-mouthed, weak apology, and then he goes back to his electorate and pretends it hasn't happened. I get the local papers, the Northen Daily Leader up there, and I see what Mr Joyce writes. It is incoherent. It is a word salad. What he did was pretended he did not say what he did. That is the modus operandi of the extremist: say something provocative, offensive, mean spirited and extreme and then run away from it, and then do it again and do it again and do it again in an effort to try and court some sectional, minor accretion of political advantage.

I tried to list some of the areas that other politicians here are extremists about—Senator Antic, everything, I think, in truth. But what is the approach by what passes for leadership in the Liberal and National parties on these issues? It's to tolerate it. It's to encourage it. It's pats on the back. It's 'don't worry, mate; it'll be alright'. That is what has happened to a once proud political organisation that pretends it's capable of being an alternative government. You don't get to be an alternative government if you drift so far from mainstream Australia that you become purveyors and encouragers of wacky ideas, of extremism, just like this motion.

What sits underneath it? It's a hostility to Aboriginal Australia—to its culture, to its history, to the great task of reconciliation, as complicated and messy as that is. It's a hostility to 65,000 years of history. We saw Mr Dutton refuse to go to Garma. And he said, when interviewed—I thought this was remarkable; it passed without much comment—he was opposed to truth-telling. What does he want people to tell—lies? He's opposed to truth-telling. What an extraordinary proposition. Now, reconciliation, native title, a recognition of our history—sure. These are matters of social and economic justice, no question. Of course they are. But they also make Australia stronger. They make Australia stronger because they knit our community together. Our 65,000 years of Indigenous history are a national asset. Our kids should be proud of it. I know it's a national asset because, when I travel overseas representing Australia at trade conferences and fora all over the world, it is a national asset. It makes us stronger. It particularly makes us stronger in our region.

This idea from Senator Hanson that we should pit Australians against each other, particularly in country towns, when so much good work is going on—I travel much of regional Australia, and I hear a very different story to the story that Senator Hanson tells. I hear from people who are working hard to build their communities, to build strength in their communities and to get on with the task of reconciliation at a national and local level.

We have here just one more example of the One Nation party, the Nationals and the Liberals getting more and more extreme, further and further away from mainstream Australia, further and further away from where ordinary Australians are on these questions, and more and more divisive and determined to make Australia weaker, not stronger, because their political calculation is if they make Australia weaker and convince people that they are losing then they might just win something. That's what this is all about. I've got no hope for the One Nation party on these propositions—it is a definitional question for them; they don't exist without this kind of base politics—but there ought to be a little bit of self-reflection amongst the Liberal and National parties about where this leaves them and where it leaves the country.