Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia is the best country in the world—our quality of life, the freedoms we hold dear, the opportunities to succeed regardless of our background, and the spirit of fairness. The fair go and mateship are unique to us. I also choose to believe that the ideals are still held dear by the majority of mainstream Australia. But what about the state of our politics in this country in 2024? A recent survey found that only 37 per cent of Australians are satisfied with our politics or democracy.

I recently visited a local school in Launceston and spoke to students about Australia's democracy to determine their views. I was impressed at their ability to articulate a viewpoint, but I was taken aback when I asked them who the Prime Minister of Australia was and who the Leader of the Opposition was. Their hands shot up for the first question, and the students said 'Anthony Albanese'. We need to do better to talk to our kids about Australia's democracy, how our parliamentary system works and how our democracy functions day to day.

When students are in year 10, we help them to produce a resume and we talk about the joy of tax returns, but we don't educate them about our local state and federal levels of government and that they have an obligation and, in fact, an opportunity to vote in all of these levels of government. We must teach the importance of having an opinion and turning it into a voice of reason. The discussion around the importance of Australian democracy and why it's so important to care for it is because we all benefit from a vibrant democracy.

When we have a global conflict, as we do in the Middle East, and hateful protests are being held in Australia, we need to do better to care for our own democracy and to unite people rather than divide them, so we need to be mindful of the words that are used by community leaders and parliamentarians in this place and the other place. People have busy lives and competing interests. They're working. They've got to make choices in terms of where they get their news and information from, and people are now turning away—which is really sad—and making a conscious choice to not watch the nightly news or read their local newspapers because it's too depressing. Often people will tell me that they don't get their news from mainstream media anymore because it isn't positive or uplifting. This makes the work of leaders more difficult, and we need to use other forms of media and communication to reach out to the public and have them engage with us in positive ways. Continued negativity, misinformation and disinformation only weaken our public interest in politics and our democracy.

Sometimes our politics through the media can turn mean and actually undermines the public trust in our democratic institutions, so the broader public switches off. People do not like to see nasty political attacks on each other. The media searching for that gotcha moment might be good for them, but it just undermines our democracy. That's why the general public, the media and politicians all need to work together to tender and look after our democracy. We are so lucky in this country that when we go to an election, whenever that is, there won't be anyone standing at the polling booths with a machine gun, making sure people can have entry to the polling booths. We have to guard that. We have to honour that. Most of all, we have to respect it.

It's fine to have different views. That's what a democracy is all about. But what we really need to do is make sure that the governments in this country take care of that democracy and tender that garden of democracy and that the law will apply no matter who you are and where you're from. That misleading information and deceptive and unreasonable contributions that harm our society must be condemned. To see politicians and political parties using a crisis for their own political gain does not go down well with the Australian people. The more important—

Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Polley.