Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

The great English-Irish philosopher Edmund Burke warned about the tyranny of the majority. We see that today with the major parties using their numbers to abuse due process. The whole point of democracy is transparency and accountability. If we run this inquiry in the next five days—throughout sitting days, I might add, when, I dare say, there will be a lot of other bills coming up—there will not be enough time to scrutinise these two very important bills.

One is to do with keeping children off the internet. As I have pointed out before, there are already apps out there in the market whereby you can actually monitor your children and the apps they are using and you can keep them off those apps if you want to block them. So why on earth are the Liberal Party, who are always talking about small government and using the free market, turning their backs on their own ideals—and not for the first time, I might add? They are very good at talking out of both sides of their mouths, the Liberal Party, when it comes to their so-called beliefs in empowering the individual. Why on earth they want to shut this down is indicative of their inability to stand up for their own values.

The second thing we need to look at is this electoral legislation amendment. Yet again, we were warned by the people that were founding fathers of democracy and enlightenment in the 17th and 18th century that the whole point of democracy was to empower the individual. Yet what we see here are the two major parties again seeking to use their numbers to shut down transparency on what they intend to do with amendments to the Electoral Act. This is not something that should be played with because democracy and making sure we have a rigorous democratic process are at the heart of trust in this country. Let me tell you, the public have never had a great deal of trust for politicians but they are fed up to the back teeth with the entire process, the entire establishment, not just politicians but the health system, the military. We get the stories of abuse within the military, and when you try and raise it through Veterans' Affairs, they just circle the wagons, protecting their own, rather than protecting those people who have been abused by their colleagues or by the government.

I support this motion. All it is doing is asking to push out the date of the closure of the inquiry from next week, which is completely unrealistic given we are in sitting week anyway, to the second week of February next year, which will give us a couple of months over the Christmas break to have a greater look at these two very important acts. I would ask that the major parties do the right thing by the people of Australia, do the right thing by democracy itself and make sure we can shine a light on this legislation.