2018-10-16
What the coalition government did yesterday was shameless and it was shameful. You knew exactly what was in the motion; you had it for three whole weeks! So don't try to give us this rubbish that it was an administrative error. Senator Pauline Hanson's motion was exactly about white supremacy, and you knew that. You just don't give a damn!
Now that you've had a little bit of a backlash, you're trying to backtrack. How low can the Liberal-National government get in this parliament?
I do want to put your minds at ease about one thing though. I can assure you, I can assure the government and I can assure everyone else that it is, and it absolutely should be, okay to be who you are—black, brown, white, or anyone else. But also let me tell you what it's not okay to be. It is not okay to be a racist. It is not okay to come in here and peddle white supremacy. It is not okay for the Minister for Indigenous Affairs to vote for a white supremacist motion. And it is not okay for this parliament—in any way, shape or form—to affirm a phrase that is heavily associated with and heavily rooted in neo-Nazi groups, the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi websites like the Daily Stormer. You all know that. And if you don't, then you should know that.
Yesterday we saw the Liberals and the Nationals file in here, one after the other, to vote for Senator Pauline Hanson's motion that was, as we all know, a slogan and a strategy that came straight out of the white supremacist and neo-Nazi playbook in the United States. Some, I must admit, did walk in here a little bit sheepishly, obviously browbeaten by the party rule. Others, however—the far Right majority it seems—walked in here quite triumphantly. So don't try to pull the wool over our eyes, saying you didn't know what this motion was all about. You knew exactly what this motion was about, yet you all sat there and you voted for racism. You voted against a multicultural Australia.
Senator Hanson-Young: In fact some of them were proud of it.
Absolutely; they walked in here triumphantly. By voting for this motion, the government sent a message that white supremacy is okay. That's what you did yesterday. That's probably what you believe in anyway. It is a complete disgrace and it has absolutely no place in Australia.