Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) | Hansard source

The Jacqui Lambie Network supports this motion. Obviously, I've always had a lot to say about this in the past. I don't have a speech tonight, so I'm just going to say from the Australian people out there—and there are millions of them—that right now they feel like the government has put a whole heap of duct tape over their mouths and that, instead of being a democracy, they're being sent in the opposite direction. They are now getting a dictatorship.

This is not what Aussie values are about. We have never been ashamed. We have never had fear to ask questions of others. This is not who we are. They want questions on why you're selling out our assets to the Chinese. We want questions on why you're selling our prime ag to the Chinese. We want to know why you're selling off our ports. We want to know why our infrastructure is being bought out. We want to know why our universities are being infiltrated. Let's be honest. I don't think it is a lot to ask. You owe millions of Australians some answers on this. If you think doing this is going to keep things calm, you're actually instigating more fear out there among Australians. That's exactly what you're doing out there.

Let's be honest. I've been saying it for years and it's getting worse. I've been on the sidelines for 20 months, and all I hear is how much more they're going to spend with their cheque books to buy us up. You owe it to them to answer this. By putting duct tape on us, saying, 'Please don't do that, we might offend them,' you have millions of Australians right now feeling terribly offended by you not doing this. You need to ask yourself where your allegiances belong. That is the question you need to ask. There are millions of Australians out there that want answers. This is not the way to combat this. This will not work well. You're doing this very, very, very wrongly. You owe it to every Australian. So I'm asking you and I'm asking the Labor Party to support this, because every Australian out there wants some answers. By not giving them any, we'll only make their concerns and fears even greater. Surely that's common sense.

For goodness sake, let this inquiry go ahead. One way or another we'll find a way around it and we'll keep coming. I don't think that's a smart idea either. Let's be transparent. Let's be fair, so everybody else is out there finding the answers. That's all they're asking for. But right now, when you get suspicions and there's money showing up in paper bags and stuff going on in our universities with our kids, that fear factor just lifted by about 20,000 bloody degrees, I can tell you, where I'm standing. It is concerning. Australians out there want to be assured that they have got control of the situation, not the communist Chinese—which looks like exactly what we're giving them right now. This is not the way to go ahead with things. There is no room for fear here, not ever. We are a democracy. We live by our freedoms and we love them. We have no problem in saying something when we want to say it. So why have things changed? This is not on.