Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The political consensus that is responsible for planetary breakdown, deep and entrenched economic inequalities and the roll-back of civil rights is breaking down. The status quo is dead. That much is clear. People are hungry for more than the traditional political system that time and time again lets ordinary people down. Here, for people in Australia, that choice has too often meant get stabbed in the front by the Liberals or get stabbed in the back by Labor. The paucity of ideas—and, importantly, the paucity of action, particularly from Labor, for decades—has created a moral vacuum in a party that is riddled with contradictions. Worse, their brand of so-called pragmatic politics has deeply eroded people's trust in politics and politicians. In the most recent Essential poll, more than a third of respondents said they did not trust the federal government at all. Even worse, 75 per cent of respondents said Prime Minister Albanese plays politics, 64 per cent think he changes his opinion depending on who he thinks is listening, 61 per cent said he is out of touch with ordinary people, and 53 per cent think he's narrow-minded. That's a pretty scathing assessment.

Then there's Labor's move to the right, which has, in turn, had a knock-on effect on the Liberal Party, which has reinvented itself as an ultra-conservative, right-wing outfit, embracing racism as a political strategy. People have sometimes said that we Greens are uncharitable towards Labor and that we should not equate the two big parties. But that, too, has changed, as communities feel completely betrayed by Labor, from climate to housing to Palestine. Don't get me wrong: the Liberal Party is the worst option for Australia, on every issue. Their dangerous push for nuclear and their unhinged opposition to ending live sheep export are just two cases in point. But honestly, it is getting harder and harder to tell the two parties apart. They both back Israel's invasion of Gaza and are complicit in the genocide. And Labor's proposal for Trump-style travel bans is in fact far worse than anything the Liberals dreamt up in their cruel treatment of refugees.

Basically, people are sick of being told that they should vote for the least-worst option. Again and again we see the Labor Party promise one thing and deliver almost nothing, and often worse than nothing. The political carcass of Labor that we see before us is a cautionary tale for any political party to not embrace the status quo but to dismantle it. The trappings of power and privilege that are offered when one stays within the accepted boundaries of political discourse are seductive: positive media in the Murdoch press, opportunities to sit on exclusive committees, study tours to the United States or Israel, or perhaps jobs for the boys after your term ends.

But we Greens dream bigger than this. We know we cannot continue along the terrible path that is destroying people and the planet. We demand a truly fair, equitable, environmentally sustainable and just present and future. And we fight for it, in parliament and on the ground, with communities. A world without radical change is one where corporations will continue to make megaprofits while people are barely surviving in a cost-of-living crisis. A world without pushing boundaries is a world where we continue to run down the clock on the unfolding climate crisis while oil, coal and gas companies peddle their planet-killing products. It is an upside-down world where there is more political outrage over a broken window than over the slaughter of 40,000 Palestinians.

So, is change even possible? Yes, it is possible, but only if we are willing to smash the chains that hold us back. It may be easier to convince ourselves that we have to stay within the boundaries set by the political discourse or by the media. But the reality is that we get transformative change only when we are bold, when we dream big and when we let only our imagination be the limit.

The Right has certainly used a well-worn model of getting into power and undermining the things we hold dear, rebuilding them in their image. And when the centrists and even the apparent Left get in power, they just paper over the cracks. John Howard went out of his way to break institutions and push neo-liberalism full throttle. He passed so-called Work Choices to break the unions. He created the ongoing bipartisan commitment to cruelty when dealing with people seeking asylum and took us to the forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yet, when Labor is in power, do they smash those legacies and build their own? No. They co-opt them and bring them into their narrative, and they have become hollow and empty in that process. Major political parties might be holding on to archaic and old-world systems, fooling themselves or perhaps trying to fool others that incrementalism will be enough, but people are hungry for more, and our numbers are growing. The last few years have convinced me that the Greens have been central to smashing the status quo and pushing the debate. Building new public housing protection for renters and free education are just some longstanding Greens ideals that are becoming mainstream and hitting a chord, particularly with young people, who are being screwed over by the system.

It doesn't take much analysis to show that the forces that destroy our natural environment are the same forces that keep people poor, that deny roofs over their heads and that drive an extractive economy that is measured only in profits, not in the quality of people's lives. The causes of the climate crisis are the same as those of the cost-of-living crisis, the housing crisis, the biodiversity crisis and the crisis of gendered violence and racism. The old structures of power—the corporations, the billionaires, the patriarchy and white supremacy—are holding onto them with a death grip.

The good news is, while status quo politics is breaking down, grassroots democracy and engagement is not. This is being led by young people. They see straight through the games being played by politicians and refuse to accept injustice. For months, people have been hitting the streets for Palestinian freedom in what is probably the longest running and largest weekly protest this country has ever seen. University encampments sprang up, directly challenging corporate universities that partner with arms dealers. Climate activists are taking direct action outside the establishment to break its stranglehold.

The absurdity of the system is obvious to everyone but those trapped in it. Take Senator Wong's and Senator Pratt's comments recently criticising Senator Payman for crossing the floor to vote for our motion to recognise Palestine. Just because they had to vote against marriage equality for years doesn't mean that she should have voted against her values as well. This is exactly what people are railing against—old, outdated ideas of loyalty and discipline. The world has moved on, but some are still stuck in old ideas of punishing integrity.

We must recognise, however, that the breaking down of the status quo goes both ways, so we must be cautious. It is undeniable that we see the growth of extreme right-wing politics that seek to trick and bamboozle people into blaming their circumstances not on the root causes but on the most vulnerable. This is deeply racist, homophobic and transphobic populism. The rise of the far right is our red line, and we cannot allow it to continue. We are up against a lot: politicians desperate to save their trappings of power, the billionaires that control the media, and extremely wealthy and out-of-touch corporations determined to profiteer from the earth's destruction. But we must win. There is no other choice.