Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a new grandfather with a lovely two-year-old grandchild, I have enormous interest in this motion, and I thank the senator for moving it. As I watch our grandson play and develop, I see his inquisitive mind naturally focused on learning what we adults do—watching. When he could walk at 12 months, long before he started talking, we could send him to another room and ask him to get something. He understood exactly what we said and came back with it. Children are the future of Australia, the future of humanity and our most valuable resource and asset. My comments apply to both girls and boys.

Maria Montessori, the most astute observer of human development and behaviour, said that the critical years for the formation of both character and intellect are birth to six. Parents and nearby communities determine whether a child becomes a valued contributor to and a resource for society or a drain and burden on society. It's very nature means that sex is a matter of great interest to every child. That is natural—healthy. The choice then becomes how to introduce sex to children, or children to sex—the beauty of respectful sex, the enjoyment of sex, the spirituality of sex. Anything that disturbs the child's balance, including online pornography, is damaging to children's developing minds and contributes to mental health problems, the destruction of relationships and violence against women, and violence against men. Add debasement of humans to that list, add debasement of society, add debasement of education. This applies to all humans, girls and boys, not just women but also men. When a girl debases a boy or a boy debases a girl, they debase themselves.

There will always be pornography. Some key points are limiting access to it. The robustness of the child or adult to withstand the damage of pornography and the building of strength in children, all these aspects of managing pornography are ultimately the parents responsibility. Strong morals are the precursor. Choice leads to accountability and that leads to trust. Give people a solid basis for making respectful decisions. Truth based on facts and data is vital for making respectful decisions. Parents cannot be with a child for life, so it is our responsibility as parents and grandparents to guide the child to discover these for themselves, to develop their role in society right across the country, and instil in children to value truth and respect for fellow humans, whether male or female. That is largely up to the parents to display. When children and adults value truth, accountability and respect, they take responsibility for their decisions and have respect for each other.

Maria Montessori developed the Montessori method based on love and orderliness. A lot of people think it is just love but it is also a sense of orderliness. Children need boundaries and they are absolutely essential for giving them security. Sadly, today's governments are undermining parents and that means a growing number of parents abandon responsibility for their children. Children sense that and miss it. It creates a hole, a yearning within. Again, Maria Montessori said, 'Wherever one sees a lack of responsibility, one finds a lack of choice.'

Governments are undermining parents in so many ways, removing the parent's choice in parenting, usurping the parent's role, undermining the parent's role, breaching morals, telling lies. Governments are killing truth: climate, lies, fear, the belief that the planet is going to end in five years, that the oceans are boiling, that the globe is boiling. This hurts learning, when children are in fear. It's an antihuman agenda. Beyond the climate scam and the COVID scam, humans are portrayed in an antihuman agenda as greedy, rapacious, uncaring, irresponsible and unkind. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Pygmalion effect comes into play. People, especially children, live up to the expectations that we and society have of them.

Then we've got gender distortion. Transgender itself is a nonsense. We cannot change gender or sex. Chromosomes are either XX, female, or XY, male. Why try when it's futile? We cannot reverse attempts to transition. We must hold all people in regard and respect and treat all people with love and support, not physical mutilation with chemicals, whether it's a mental health condition such as temporary gender dysphoria or the tiny percentage of adults who are hermaphrodite.

Look at Sheldon's book from the turn of the previous century. Beauty used to be in the sparkle of a person's eyes, the shine of the hair, the glow of the skin. Now we devalue physical attributes in many women, and young women hide behind make-up and live with the delusion that who they are is not good enough—terrible. It all starts with truth, and truth starts with parents displaying truth, valuing truth and instilling truth. (Time expired)