If you follow politics, you are about to be inundated with commentary about the “Coalition”, whether Sussan Ley or David Littleproud is in the right and another round of “disunity is death” pieces written by people who have never faced the voters themselves.
I do not read or listen to much of it. It bores me to tears.
I am an elected Senator for Queensland. It is the professional honour of my life. As a Senator for Queensland, it is my job to vote in the interests of the people I represent, primarily the people of Queensland but also to uphold the overall interests of the Commonwealth of Australia.
It is not my job to worry about who is leader of a party or who has relationships with whom. Parliament should not be a zoo. It is a place to make decisions in the best interests of the Australian people.
This week I was presented with a bill that made fundamental changes to rights that Australians had under the constitution of our great Commonwealth. To do my job, I read the entire bill and the related explanatory notes. I was aghast at the blanket removal of rights that this bill was proposing to impose on everyday Australians.
Notionally, this bill was a response to horrific evil we saw perpetrated at Bondi Beach on 14 December. But something struck me as strange when I read in the objects of the bill that it was to “protect the
Australian community against social, economic, psychological and physical harm”.
Hang on. Why would we pass laws that restrict the rights of Australians to say things that cause “economic harm”. The objects of this part fed directly into the definition of hate crime in the bill which was anything that could cause serious harm to someone based on their race, colour, ethnic or national origin.
So, say, a group of Australians organised a boycott of Russian products in protest of the invasion of Ukraine. Well, that is something that causes economic harm to a person based on their national origin. Under this bill, which has now passed, you would commit a hate crime if you organise an economic boycott of a nation that engages in war, imposes apartheid or commits any other human rights abuses.
How is this in any way a sensible response to the atrocities of 14 December?
Because of this clear deficiency in the bill, the Nationals party drafted amendments which would have restricted the definition of hate crime to things that were physical or violent in nature. This bill gives the Government the power to ban entire organisations as hate groups. It restricts the basic democratic right to freely associate.
There should be a very high bar before a government does that. And, that bar is not jumped just because a group is saying things that cause “economic” or “psychological” harm.
The Nationals party made our amendments after hours of careful deliberation. We relayed these to the Liberal leadership, including Sussan Ley. We even decided to abstain on the vote in the House of Representatives so that the Liberal party could consider the amendments. But we made it clear that we would, as a party, vote against the bill in the Senate that evening if this amendment was not supported.
In the end, we obtained the Greens support for our reasonable amendment restricting the definition of a hate crime. If Liberal Senators had joined us, the bill would have been amended. And, we would have forced Labor to either accept a better bill or vote against their own legislation.
The Liberal party refused to budge. I respect their decision, but I cannot respect the decision to then sack three Nationals Shadow Ministers for making a principled decision on a matter that went to fundamental democratic rights.
Despite what you might read in the Coalition’s obituaries in coming days, there is no precedent for the sacking of Coalition Shadow Ministers for voting in accordance with a decision of their own party room. The last time this happened was in 2008, when the Coalition voted differently on legislation to deregulate the wheat industry.
Warren Truss, Nigel Scullion and John Cobb all kept their Shadow Ministerial portfolios. They all went on to play senior roles in helping get rid of the Rudd and Gillard Governments.
The decision to sack Nationals Shadow Ministers was unfortunate, unnecessary and unprecedented. It is sad but it has happened.
What is more important than the Coalition is that the Nationals party did its job and fought for your rights. I have been inundated with support from people thankful for a group of politicians that have done what they think is right not what is best for their personal circumstances. My Shadow Ministerial colleagues face pay cuts to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, and some of their staff face losing their jobs, but no one blinked an eye.
I have never been prouder to be a member of the Nationals party.
