2023-10-13
By David Shoebridge
Senator for NSW
It’s now more than 12 months since I was elected to the Federal Parliament as part of the largest Federal Greens’ team in history. We have begun with a serious focus on integrity and justice, on climate and cost of living, and I’m proud to be part of a team working together to deliver on these.
We have hit the ground running and made progress on key matters including integrity with the new National Anti Corruption Commission, introducing the first ever Federal bill to legalise cannabis, and exposing Defence’s addiction to consultants and billions of wasteful expenditure for war mongering.
Working with our fellow Greens Senators and MPs and their teams has been a real highlight for all of us.
The first and biggest step to legalising cannabis
In this year we launched our campaign to legalise cannabis, and have been overwhelmed by the support and enthusiasm for our plan. Legal advice obtained by our office shows how the Greens can use Commonwealth powers to legalise cannabis nationally.
We also released a report from the Parliamentary Budget Office that shows the legalisation of cannabis would generate a whopping $28 billion in government revenue in the first decade after legalisation. This comes from GST, company tax and a 15% cannabis sales tax.
Our consultation on the bill had a record response with almost 9,000 respondents, and in July 2023 we introduced the bill to the Parliament. We’ll be working hard to make this law.
At least 40% of Australians have used cannabis, and it's high time we change the outdated laws that pretend to make almost half of us criminals. The real harm reduction needed in this space is getting police, the courts and the criminal justice system out of our lives for the “crime” of smoking a joint with friends or relaxing with a few gummies after a long week.
Holding Defence to account
I’ve spoken in Parliament and joined protesters around the country to stand up for peace in the face of some disturbingly aggressive warmongering by the Albanese Government and the dangerous AUKUS war-making plans. We have exposed the true cost of the AUKUS submarines deal at well over half a trillion dollars and are part of a growing movement across the country to scrap these dangerous war-making plans of the Albanese government.
The $368 billion nuclear submarine project is not just an extraordinary waste of money and opportunity that we could be using to take climate action and deliver cost of living relief, but it will make our country a target. We will continue to work with the growing peace movement to raise opposition to AUKUS and wasteful defence spending. In this work I’ll of course be
campaigning alongside Senator Jordon Steele-John and his team who have done so much to advance the cause of peace and disarmament.
We have exposed how Defence is driving the use of private consultants in Government and is by far the biggest financial contributor to the big 4 global consultants. There are already concerns about the misuse of sensitive Defence information by a former Deloitte partner and this is likely only the tip of the iceberg. The outsourcing of core Defence functions, including the design of the nuclear submarine regulator, is a serious security risk, incredibly wasteful and must be ended.
We also need to keep pushing against Australia becoming a major arms exporter which is leading us straight into the arms of some of the worst human rights abusers on the planet. Australian weapons are being sold to regimes accused of war crimes and mass human rights violations. Australian weapons are helping to fuel the brutal war in Yemen, causing the world's largest humanitarian catastrophe forcing millions of children into hunger. This must end.
Real progress on integrity
As part of the new integrity Parliament I worked collaboratively with the crossbench and major parties to deliver essential reforms to the proposed National Anti-Corruption Commission to make it the most independent, powerful and broad-based one possible. This would not have happened without the work and advocacy of many Greens members and elected representatives including of course Senator Larissa Waters whose previous bill to Parliament on a national ICAC was critically important.
Of course the final model still doesn’t go far enough with the Albanese Government limiting it to holding public hearings only in “exceptional circumstances”, we’re monitoring how this happens in practice and will continue to push for change.
We’re also continuing to work on the impossible conflict of interest of the Australian Federal Police employing PwC as well as being tasked with investigating them! My colleague Barbara Pocock has shown the widespread outsourcing to PwC and other consultants under the Albanese Government across other departments and the impossible conflicts of interest this creates and we’ll be working collaboratively on these.
As this goes to print the Senate inquiry we established into the country’s broken FOI laws is up and running. The demands for change from the media and the public are loud and growing. It is our job to expose the collective disinterest in disclosure shown by both Labor and the Coalition and force change in the public interest.
Protecting those that speak the truth - whistleblowers and protesters alike
We have continued to give our support for calls to free Julian Assange. This included criticising the government's lack of action on the imprisonment of Julian Assange in Federal Parliament and obtaining a personal apology to Julian’s father John Shipton for heavy-handed actions by Parliamentary security when they visited Parliament. There is more planned in this space in my work with the Parliamentary Group to Bring Home Julian Assange.
As I began my Federal Parliamentary term, the prosecution of whistleblower Bernard Collaery was finally dropped. We continue to work with Military Whistleblower David McBride. David has been prosecuted in relation to the series of appalling alleged war crimes he exposed in Australia’s war in Afghanistan. His prosecution must end.
I have also advocated for ATO whistleblower Richard Boyle who called out oppressive use of garnishee orders by the office, a kind of robodebt in the ATO that was putting rights at risk. It shouldn’t be a crime to tell the truth.
This year we also launched our plans to introduce a Federal Bill for the right to protest in 2023 with Senator Nick McKim and the leader of the Tasmanian Greens Cassy O'Connor MP at the Bob Brown Foundation in Tasmania.
The right to protest is under assault in states and territories across the country with real impacts on democracy and the ability to demand changes to unjust laws and policies. Our bill is an attempt to rebalance the scales towards justice.
Digital rights for all (and reasons for corporations to pay attention)
Our office has been leading the push for real accountability following the revelation that the private data of 10 million Optus customers was hacked. We have advocated for stronger digital privacy laws that prevent this kind of breach happening again, and which punish companies for the corporate negligence that hurts everyday Australians.
It’s clear that for too many years corporations have been writing the rules for data management and access and this has put the public’s data at serious risk. This needs to change.
We also continue our work for online safety seeking an empowered eSafety Commissioner with the power to protect our rights and safety online.
Working with communities on what they care about
Our community campaigning and organising has continued with strong outreach across NSW.
This has included work on the danger of online harassment of diaspora communities including exposing the AFP hiding behind weak laws to not take action. Communities including the Sikh community in NSW have raised concerns about racist targeting which we continue to work with them to have addressed.
We have worked with the Kurdish and Iranian communities including in the wake of the death of Jina Mahsa Amini and the woman, life, freedom protests that followed. We have also continued our advocacy and political sponsorship of Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi and we will continue to fight for him and all other political prisoners.
As always we stand with the Palestinian community demanding peace and justice, especially after the brutal attacks in Jenin.
We have continued our ongoing solidarity with the Kashmiri and West Papuan communities both inside and outside of Parliament to raise awareness of the atrocities they have been facing and to continue to advocate for their right to self-determination.
We have worked closely with the Pakistani and Bangladeshi diasporas to raise their voices on important issues that face their communities including their concerns around rising political tensions and political oppression.
In recent months our work with multicultural communities in NSW has also covered the referendum on the voice, bringing together First Nations elders and community leaders to tell truths, work together and build solidarity not just for the referendum but more broadly. This is important and resource intensive work for our office.
The rise of political instability around the world means that increasingly diaspora communities are looking to The Greens for solidarity and support to raise their concerns and stand up for human rights. This is an ongoing project for our office which will see us engaging in ongoing campaigning and organising throughout NSW.
It is a privilege to be a Greens Senator and to represent such a diverse state as NSW. As Greens members know, there is always more work to do than time or resources allow. None of the work I do would be possible or meaningful without the support of my team and I want to thank each of Kym, Siavosh, Nicola, Kilty, Olivia, Harriet, Bella, Sam, Alison, Baran and Taylor for their comradeship in this impossible job we all have.
– David