Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

If you can't see the slide into fascism that's currently happening in the United States, you are simply not paying attention. At Donald Trump's inauguration, as the billionaire oligarchs lined up to pay their obeisance, the biggest of them all with the highest profile of them all, Elon Musk—the person with probably the biggest social media reach in the world, in part because he owns one of the biggest social media platforms in the world—literally gave a Nazi salute. For people who are going to try to argue that it wasn't actually a Nazi salute, I'll say this: if you're one of the highest-profile people in the world and a massive global debate erupts about whether or not you gave a Nazi salute and you don't come out and say, 'It wasn't a Nazi salute,' then it was a Nazi salute.

The United States is sliding into fascism under Donald Trump, and it is marginalised communities who are going to pay the price: black skinned and brown skinned people, migrants in the US, women in the US, and transgender and queer folks in the US. They're going to be persecuted, demonised and blamed for all the problems of the day. And do you know what else is going to pay the price? Nature is going to pay the price under his 'drill, baby, drill' policies of destroying nature. The climate is going to pay the price, as we're already seeing a withdrawal from global climate action. President Trump is a disaster for humanity. He belongs behind bars, not in the Oval Office.