MATTERS OF URGENCY
Senator SHOEBRIDGE (New South Wales) (16:46): If there's one phrase that should destroy any sense of hope that you have that something will happen, it's when the Albanese government says they're 'actively considering' something. Beware! If you actually want meaningful change in this country, if you want to actually produce some legislative outcome, protect a right or have something happen, the worst thing that can happen to you is to have the Albanese government actively consider it.
They are specialists in active consideration, and they've been actively considering this unanimous recommendation for a human rights act for more than three years. No doubt they'll be actively considering it when summer comes, when winter comes and in the seasons that follow. They'll be actively considering it because that's what the Albanese government does: endless reviews and no action.
One of the reasons why the public isn't pushing down the doors on this is that, when you survey the Australian public, half of them think we already have a human rights act. They assume that a country that's had a parliamentary democracy for over a century at a federal level at some point in the century might have got its act together and produced something that protects human rights.
But, to its utter shame, this parliament has not done that. We keep hearing excuses from the Labor Party and the coalition and we hear resistance from One Nation to the idea of actually giving citizens rights. Do you know what I think people in this place are most scared of?
They are scared that people will use those rights to protect themselves from crap laws passed by this place and use those rights to protect themselves from the reach of the surveillance state. They'll use those laws to protect their privacy from big tech coming in and sucking up their and their kids' data. That's what people in this place, outside of the Greens, are concerned about when they oppose a human rights act.
They're concerned that they'll give citizens and people in this country the right to push back. I can tell you now, as a Greens senator, I fundamentally believe that we need to fix this country by giving vastly more rights to citizens and people in this country to push back against governments when they want to throw in the surveillance state, when they want to stop you at a roadside stop and suck down the data off your phone.
I'm in the Greens because we are committed to human rights, and we're far more committed to the rights of people going about their business in this country without being monstered by the police and surveilled by the state. We have far more interest in the rights of citizens than we are in the rights of the state to come in and monster you. The reason why Labor and the coalition and their mates in One Nation oppose a human rights act is that they put the rights of the state to surveil you, to imprison you and to steal your data before the rights of the citizen.
We put the rights of Australians—their right to not be monitored by the state—first. What's this about? Thankfully, we've now seen this coalition of some 170 human rights organisations come together and demand that this place live up to the commitments that Australia has made with international conventions and produce a human rights act.
They don't want to see some bunch of bureaucrats actively considering it until we all shuffle off. Those 170 human rights organisations came out and said: 'Do something. Pass a human rights act'—which a unanimous committee in this parliament said should be made law.
If we get through this parliamentary term having had the Albanese government actively consider a human rights act without passing a human rights act, that will be peak Labor. That will be peak Prime Minister Albanese. That will be another three years of actively considering—twiddling their thumbs, moving things from one bureaucrat's desk to another, getting their senators to come here and give these endless 'turn the wheels, but please, please don't do anything' speeches.
That will be peak Labor. I don't want peak Labor. We've seen peak Labor.
Peak Labor is the valley in which rights die. We want to see a human rights act. I'm in the Greens because we're a party committed to a human rights act, and, every time there's a vote on it, we're going to vote for the rights of Australians over the rights of this place to monitor you.