Alex Antic (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What happened to the Australia of yesteryear—the Australia that was hopeful, the Australia that was proud? What happened to the Australia that in 1988 assembled a group of entertainers of different backgrounds to 'make it great in 88' and to have a celebration of the nation in relation to Australia's bicentenary? As a 13-year-old Aussie boy who lived and breathed sport, whose heroes were the rough-and-tumble characters of the Norwood Football Club, like legend Garry McIntosh, and cricketing great DK Lillee, I knew I was living in the greatest country in the world. I was proud of our history and I was hopeful for the future.

Sadly, that's no longer the experience of Aussie kids today. It's hard to find sporting heroes that stick to their lane of playing their sport. Today kids get lectures about climate change, diversity and other such issues from their sports stars. Today they get Pride Month and one—albeit contested—Australia Day. And it's not much better for the adults. They get a Labor government with a penchant for distraction and scoring cheap political points rather than addressing the cost-of-living crisis and the degradation of our culture. This is the same Labor government, by the way, that spent around $300 million on the failed Voice to parliament referendum, which really represents what would be almost the most expensive indulgence in virtue signalling and identity politics in our nation's history.

This is why Australians are feeling less optimistic about the future than previous generations. For younger Australians, the prospect of owning their own home seems dim as interest rates, rent, grocery prices and fuel prices increase. But it's more than simply an economic malaise that the Australians are enduring. For a start, many young students are being indoctrinated by an activist led education system into believing that climate change is going to incinerate the earth in the next 20 years unless something drastic is done right now. We often hear about the youth mental health crisis in this country. Frankly, if I were a younger person—which I'm not—I'd be depressed as well if adults that I'm supposed to trust such as schoolteachers were constantly telling me the world is going to end soon. The public school system is now so preoccupied with ensuring that children adopt subversive progressive ideology. Whether it be sowing gender confusion or seeking to make children ashamed of heritage, this cultural self-loathing is fuelled by the factors that I just described.

Australians are worried about the trajectory of gender ideology and why such a thing is being actively promoted in government funded institutions such as hospitals and schools. The University of Adelaide, I recently discovered, have female sanitation bins in the male toilets. They're worried about the prospect of more coercive restrictions and policies like they experienced during COVID, whether it's another virus like disease X or something as ludicrous as the climate hysteria. They're worried about central bank digital currencies and the erasure of cash in our society making participation in the economy a privilege and not a right. They're worried about the increasing influence of those who claim that you'll own nothing and you'll be happy. Indeed, at the recent globalist talk fest in Davos, one of the anointed speakers did actually say:

There is no realistic solution to the climate transition that does not involve a globally coordinated system of carbon taxes.

Those opposite, I'm looking at you.

But it's not all doom and gloom. There is reason to be hopeful. People are starting to wake up to the narrative of the globalist left, and they're doing it by the thousands. Those who call out the absurdity of a net zero utopia or the horrendous damage inflicted on vulnerable young people by gender ideologues are rewarded by the gratitude of the quiet Australians. The rise of what is pejoratively called populism throughout the Western world and pushback against wokeness is evidence this global trend is coming to an end, and that's a good thing, not a bad thing, Senator Pratt.