Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens will not be supporting Senator Bernardi's motion. It is full of inaccuracies, and, shambolically, he even tried to amend it on the floor.

An honourable senator: Delete!

Delete it—that's right. GetUp!, the organisation, were not calling for the deregistration of Dr Lai, and in fact the petition calling for that has now been removed from the CommunityRun petition site. This is not an issue of free speech. The calls for Dr Lai's deregistration weren't, as alleged by Senator Bernardi, for exercising her right to free speech, but out of deep concern regarding her seeming support for discredited, dangerous and ineffective gay conversion therapy. We as the Greens do not support the call for Dr Lai's deregistration; however, we do unequivocally oppose gay conversion therapy. Memo to Senator Bernardi: LGBTQI people exist, we're going to continue to exist, we cannot be converted and we deserve to have our rights treated as equal under the law.