Right to Protest Bill 2025

Senator McKENZIE (Victoria—Leader of the Nationals in the Senate) (10:06): Obviously, the coalition won't be supporting this bill, the Right to Protest Bill 2025. However, I am a firm believer in the right to protest in a democracy. Throughout my life, I have participated in a lot of protests that I wish Senator Shoebridge had joined me in—Keep the Sheep protests where, outside this very parliament, farmers from Western Australia, sheep farmers from across the country, livestock transporters and those that support the agricultural industry sought to get Labor to overturn their ban on the live sheep export industry, which is cruelling the livelihoods of thousands of people, particularly in regional Western Australia.

The right to be heard, though, is not the right to hold everybody else hostage. And I really want to go to the view of the Greens in Victoria about the VicGrid project, which is rolling out across regional Victoria, where farmers are standing in solidarity against hundreds of 80-metre wind towers and transmission lines rolling out across their prime agricultural land—an authoritarian Labor government supported by the Greens in Victoria is taking away the right of these people to appeal decisions of government—to lock the gate against officials seeking to get these projects off the ground.

I'm also against protests which do hold other people hostage and impede their freedom of movement. I've spoken with Jewish communities in Australia, in particular in Melbourne after the Adass synagogue bombing, who told me that they were restricted— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Ciccone ): Minister Ayres on a point of order? Senator Ayres: Yes, it is a point of order.

I just took a bit of time to reflect on a comment that Senator McKenzie made. I don't want to make a lot of it, but I don't think today— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Minister, what is the point of order? Senator Ayres: I'm seeking a withdrawal.

I think today is not the day to describe the Victorian government as 'authoritarian'. I reckon enabling that kind of discourse is not very helpful at the moment. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Thank you, Minister.

There is no point of order. Senator McKenzie, please continue, noting that you probably only have about two minutes left. Senator McKENZIE: Democracy runs on persuasion, not on threats and coercion.

I take the minister's objection to me calling the Jacinta Allan Labor government in Victoria authoritarian. I would like the minister to come with me to regional Victoria, where they want to lock the gate against her officials who seek to take away their private property rights so that she, along with the Greens, can roll out their 100 per cent renewable dreams, trash the property values, destroy environmental ecosystems along the 240-kilometre transmission line corridor and destroy community cohesion as they pit family against family in the rollout of this project.

The minister thinks he knows what authoritarianism looks like. Well, he doesn't. It looks like Jacinta Allan in Victoria—the same government that locked Victorians up during COVID, that arrested pregnant women for going for walks and that actually sought to destroy the social cohesion of our community in Victoria.

But then we go to protests against the Gillard government's carbon tax—an incredibly successful protest—or against the Labor Party's Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal, when truckies descended en masse from across the country to say this was a bad Labor government doing bad things to small businesses and the employment options across the country. And we sought to overturn that.

There were the 'never again' protests against antisemitism, which I would love to see Senator Shoebridge and the Greens senators join me in—to march against antisemitism and actually put their feet to not just the pro-Palestinian movement, which does intimidate Jewish Australians from attending capital cities. The minister interrupted my comments about a Jewish man from Melbourne who, after the Adass synagogue bombing, spoke to me personally about being warned against taking his young family into the Melbourne CBD on the weekends because of Senator Shoebridge and his colleagues in the Greens taking to the streets to support Palestine and chanting antisemitic— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Unfortunately, the time for this debate has expired.

Senator Shoebridge, on a point of order? Senator Shoebridge: I'd ask the senator to withdraw that. It was a reflection on me and millions of Australians.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I don't believe there is a point of order there— Senator Shoebridge: Well, did you listen? The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I did, and thank you very much.