Crimes Amendment (Prohibiting the Strip Searching of Children) Bill 2026, Crimes Amendment (Prohibiting Shackling During Childbirth) Bill 2026

Senator SHOEBRIDGE (New South Wales—Leader of the Australian Greens) (10:24): I rise on behalf of my party, the Greens, to give our clear and unambiguous support to these two pieces of legislation brought by Senator Thorpe: the Crimes Amendment (Prohibiting the Strip Searching of Children) Bill 2026 and the Crimes Amendment (Prohibiting Shackling During Childbirth) Bill 2026.

The first piece of legislation is to prohibit the stripsearching of children. Basically, it's a piece of legislation that says children should not be tortured, humiliated or subjected to, effectively, state sanctioned sexual assault. That's what this bill says.

The fact that we're even having this debate about whether it would get to a committee process to make sure that this becomes law, I think, is an indictment on politics. I want to be clear on behalf of my party, the Greens. Children should not be stripsearched by the state.

That's it. Children should not be stripsearched by force by the state. The second piece of legislation is the Crimes Amendment (Prohibiting Shackling During Childbirth) Bill 2026, which says that, when women are giving birth, they must not be shackled.

Let's just sit with that for a minute. We have to pass legislation in this country to say women should not be shackled to their beds when they're giving birth, and the reason we have to pass that legislation in this country is that right now that is the experience of women across this country—overwhelmingly First Nations women, but not just First Nations women.

We know the women who are being shackled to their beds while they're giving birth to their kids. They're First Nations women and they're poor women. That's who it's happening to, and maybe that's why the Labor Party, the coalition and One Nation don't see it and don't care, because it's First Nations women and poor women that have been shackled to their beds while they're giving birth to their children.

For anyone who's a father or a mother and has been there at that moment when new life is given and your daughter or your son comes into this world, this is an extraordinary moment—a mixture of fear, hope, love and passion. It is an extraordinary moment in anyone's life—mum, dad or grandparents. Ask yourself—anyone in this chamber who's been in that space as new life is being given—what you would have thought or said if either you, your partner or your daughter was shackled to the bed.

Ask yourself what you would think about a country that permitted that to happen. I'll tell you what I think: I think it's a disgrace. We have the Labor Party and the coalition come in here and say, 'No, we're not going to stop this practice.' It happens in the NT, in Queensland and in New South Wales.

It happens across the country. The Labor Party and the coalition come in and say: 'No, that's a matter for states and territories. If they want to shackle women to the bed while they're giving birth, we'll just let them do that.

All of you have been given unambiguous legal advice from two of the most senior lawyers you could get in this space—a senior counsel and a highly experienced solicitor—who have clearly said the external affairs power under the Constitution says that the Commonwealth can come in and prohibit this torture of women giving birth, and you all say, 'No, it's a matter for the states and territories if they want to continue shackling women while they're giving birth.' You're going to let them do it, or you're going to ask for some more consistent collection and reporting of data on it.

That's what you're doing. It is unbelievable that that's your defence and that that's your opposition to Senator Thorpe's legislation. When it comes to stripsearching kids, when I was a state MP my office resourced Sniff Off, and my current office continues to do so.

The reason we've resourced Sniff Off, which identifies where police are engaging in drug dog operations, is that we have seen time and time again how traumatising the search—including, so often, a strip search—is for young women at music festivals and people just walking their way down the streets—that humiliation when you're being taken and stripsearched. When it happens in detention centres or on the streets, overwhelmingly nothing is found, and overwhelmingly it's First Nations kids that are being stripsearched.

But let me be clear. Every single time the state stripsearches a child, it's a violent, violent assault on that child and a humiliation. And we say it should be unlawful and illegal.

Pass this bill. If you want to amend it, let it get into committee and amend it. Don't torture women giving birth and don't stripsearch children.