Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party) | Hansard source

Last night I attended the AgriFutures Rural Women's Award dinner. What a terrific night. What extraordinary women. What great stories of innovation, imagination and optimism. None of these stories would ever include trespassing on someone else's property, scaring the family who live there and jeopardising the biosecurity of the animals involved. I deeply resent members of the Greens in any way comparing the peaceful protests that farmers may have engaged in, and will still be able to enjoy with this legislation in place, with the terrifying, offensive and militant invasions that have taken place in Queensland.

The Criminal Code Amendment (Agricultural Protection) Bill 2019 seeks to stop the sort of activism we have seen recently in Queensland. The lead proponent posted to Facebook videos where she laughed at the paltry fines awarded by the magistrate—no conviction was recorded—who called the farms and the families that had been terrorised victims. She gave a shout-out to her crew for the next invasion. Queenslanders and Australians have begged this government to provide greater security for them and greater penalties for those activists who provided distress and alarm to people who woke up that morning with no idea of how their lives were about to be changed for the worse.

We in parliament have a simple choice to make in these sitting weeks: to give into anarchists or to stand up strongly for what's right. What's right is to protect the law-abiding citizens from those who see the law not as a rigid framework for a civil society but as a low bar that they can simply step over to achieve their aims. It doesn't help that we hear inflammatory language from one of the country's senior unionists, encouraging anyone to break laws they don't agree with. We even have senators from the Greens refusing to denounce what can only be described as anti-Australian behaviour.

Aussie Farms head Chris Delforce's claim that tougher laws won't deter him from his campaign against farmers provides one positive—that is, we now have no doubt about the aims of those who would invade family homes, intimidate legitimate businesses and disrupt, with these illegal protests, everyday Australians getting to work and hospitals. They are simply picking a cause du jour as a vehicle for more sinister aims, sparking rebellion against what they see as an outdated and unfair system so that they can impose their own worldview.

To be clear: while these invasions are a fun outing for some, it is not for those living in fear of when the next invasion will come. In March, now-senators Gerard Rennick, Paul Scarr and I visited Lemontree Feedlot to see my friends the McNamees soon after their terrifying and distressing invasion by masked and uniformed invaders. David begged the invaders to leave his land and stay away from his frightened animals. The scars of that day may never heal.

I've been to the abattoir at Yangan and the butcher shop at Taringa, who were also victims of this illegal activism. To these people the invasion was as distressing as you can imagine, and the loss of security and the sense of safety in their own home or workplace is unacceptable. I've seen farmers reduced to tears at the prospect of hordes of trespassers flooding their farms. I've heard 14-year-old schoolgirls say that they've decided not to have children because they've been told by these extremists that it would be cruel to bring children into a dead planet. Only the most morally bankrupt would see scaring children and robbing them of their future as a way to win an argument. Practical members of society scoff at such outlandish behaviour and get on with their day, but ignoring the anarchists amongst us has actually emboldened them.

My colleague in the Senate Paul Scarr has spoken publicly about Saul Alinsky, who published a book in 1971 called Rules for Radicals. Alinsky's advice was: 'Pick the target, freeze it, personalise it and polarise it.' It wasn't just seized upon by 1970s hippies, communists and Marxists in the West; we see it happening today in the tactics of Aussie Farms, Extinction Rebellion, anti-Australia Day activists and climate change alarmists. Aided by the internet and soft laws, these people have ridden roughshod over Australians' sense of decency and fairness.

Another of Alinsky's rules is: 'Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.' From this we get terms such as 'denier', 'racist' and words ending in 'phobe'. If you have an opinion that diverges from the cultists, they don't just want to disagree with you; they want to destroy you, your family and your livelihood. Alinsky used inflammatory words such as 'enemy', 'attack' and 'threat' in his treatise, so it is no wonder that activists view their aims not simply as a struggle but as a war. Their greatest weapon in this war is the internet, and the use of it to incite others to carry out protests, legal and illegal, is why we need new laws.

This bill introduces new offences for the incitement of trespass, property damage—