James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

pat a cat or kiss a dog. Do something like that. But do not read this bill, because this is a waste of space and a waste of time, in writing. That is what this is. People wonder what people in Canberra get up to. Well, guess what? We waste time on pointless bills like this that want to stop law-abiding Australians from supporting the political party or the political cause of their choice. That's what this is about. This is about the Greens, who've become the puritans of Australian politics. Soon, we're going to be all walking around like the 'brides of green'. We'll be wearing dark-green or soft-green outfits, covering up any bodily features, because the Greens have become so puritanical in wanting to stop people from having fun unless it's their type of fun.

Quite frankly, I don't care what the Greens get up to in their spare time—I'm a libertarian. If they want to do things behind closed doors with the windows shut, they can do it. But this bill would apply to someone involved in a legal industry, such as a pub—because pubs are terrible places, aren't they, ladies and gentlemen! This shows how out of touch the Greens are. I'm someone who sends out a pub calendar each year. I pay for them myself and send out pub calendars. Because guess what pubs do? Pubs are actually community groups. Pubs are community organisations. Country pubs do so much for their local organisations. I look at the pubs in my district in the Darling Downs. If you go past a pub, often you'll see a tonne of cars out the front at 11 o'clock in the morning. You'll think, 'Jeez, people are starting early today.' But do you know what it is? Often they're having community meetings there. They're using the pub as the local community hall to talk about Landcare or about issues impacting the local community. That is because pubs are the bastion of their local community.

Under this bill by the Greens, they don't want those people supporting political parties or supporting political causes. Heaven help me—publicans are such bad people! If you don't think that people should participate in the democratic process, why don't you just ban them? Go and ban pubs. This is why the Greens are the puritans of Australian politics. They don't want you to have fun. They want to ban stuff that they don't like. They're quite happy to sit in their darkened corners and munch on a bit of moss and talk to each other about the grand old days when Bob Brown was leader: 'Wasn't it fantastic? We stopped everything from happening in Tasmania. Isn't it brilliant? The unemployment rate's up to 20 per cent under our policies.' That's what the Greens are all about because they're the party of misery. Imagine waking up as a green each morning. I suppose it could be worse; you could wake up next to a green! But anyway.

I have wasted five or 10 minutes of my life reading this bill. Another episode of Andor hasn't come out. Andor is a great series for those people who are watching it. I got up to episode 12 last week. I've got to wait for the next season to come out.

The Greens also want to stop people from giving money to political parties if they are involved in the sale, marketing or distribution of pharmaceutical products. So they want to stop pharmacists. They want to stop chemists. They want to stop community pharmacy. The other bastion of regional towns, suburbs and villages across Australia—those evil people!—is pharmacists. Do you know who makes up one of the most trusted professions in Australia? Pharmacists. Community pharmacy. The Greens want to stop community pharmacists—those people who do so much for the health and wellbeing of Australians. They want to stop that evil industry of pharmacists from getting involved in the political process by supporting a political cause. Are you serious? What were you on when you wrote this? You were probably on something that was prescribed to you by a pharmacist, and you overdosed on it, or, quite frankly, you should go to a pharmacist and get some medication to stop you from writing such rubbish.

This is just bonkers stuff. There are so many more important issues in Australia at the moment that I'm sure this chamber could be united on to make the best country in the world that much better. Quite frankly, being a bunch of wowsers on heat and wandering down the main streets of the towns and villages of Australia, being these puritans stopping law-abiding citizens from participating in the democratic process does not assist. It doesn't help democracy at all. What this does is stop people from participating in democracy. It stops law-abiding people from participating in democracy, and that is not a good thing.

I refer to the comments of Senator McAllister. The government, as is the case after each election, regardless of the political colours of the government, write to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters and ask it to conduct an inquiry into the previous election. There are specific terms of reference, which Senator Farrell has put in his letter, asking the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters to inquire into. I sit on this committee along with Senator Cadell, and we are taking a very serious and sober look into the running of the 2022 election and also into the proposals that the Labor Party have outlined. It won't surprise people in the chamber to know that we do oppose many of the proposals that have been put forward by the Labor Party—for example, giving New Zealanders and other foreigners the right to vote in Australian elections. We oppose that. We certainly will oppose spending caps because we do not believe spending caps will assist in promoting a pluralistic democracy.

When you look at what's happened in Queensland, where the state elections are not run on an electoral system that is fair—there is a financial gerrymander, because political parties are capped at spending $15 million but unions are capped at $10 million. There are 26 registered unions in Queensland. There's one Labor Party, there is one Liberal-National Party and there are the Greens and various other minor parties. What it means is that those on the centre right of politics are capped at spending $15 million in an electoral cycle, but for those on the Left—the Greens, Labor and 26 unions—well, 26 times 10 is 260. For those who are arithmetically challenged, that's $260 million that the unions can spend in campaigning against the election of a Liberal-National Party plus $30 million from the Greens. That's $290 million, whereas my party is limited to $15 million. That is a complete and utter financial gerrymander. There is no fair electoral system in Queensland.

One of the proposals that I suspect Labor may bring forward will be a financial gerrymander at a federal level. That would not be fair and it would not be appropriate. What is also not fair and not appropriate is to bring in a similar financial gerrymander that locks out those who are engaged in legal industries from participating in the democratic process. If the Greens don't think that someone who is involved in defence industry or in a financial institution or has a pub or is in the resource sector or runs a chemist or is a property developer or anything like that should participate in the democratic process, it shows their Stalinist approach to a pluralist democracy, but it also shows their failure to understand how the Australian economy works, because you are talking about tens of thousands of people—indeed, hundreds of thousands if not millions of Australians—who depend on these industries.

What the Greens are saying is that you might work for your local pub, but you're a bad person because you work for a pub. We don't like pubs because we don't like fun. We don't like people getting out and enjoying themselves. We don't think your pub should be able to donate or support the political party of your choice, unless it's the Greens, because, let's face it, the Greens want to turn us into a one-party state. Being a member of the Greens party is just a massive example of waking up in a bed by yourself.

This is what the Greens want to do to Australia: you can only have thoughts that the Greens agree with, you can only have beliefs that the Greens agree with and you can only support causes that the Greens agree with. Now, if you want to support the Greens—because, quite frankly, you are one chromosome short of the village idiot—go ahead and do it. That is your choice. I'm not going to stop you from doing that. If you want to support my party, or Labor or any of the minor parties, do it. I encourage people to get involved in the political process. I encourage people to join political parties or causes of their choice. I'm not going to stop you doing it. I don't want to stop you doing it; we need more people to get involved in Australia's democracy, not fewer people. We need to stop shaming people.

Quite frankly, how many people work in the resource sector? I reckon it's almost 300,000 people whose jobs depend on the resource sector. So they say to them: 'Well, too bad. You can't really work there.' We're talking about people who work in the financial sector—probably also 300,000 people—and we're talking about people who work in the property sector, probably talking about another 200,000 Australians. Then we're talking about the hundreds of thousands of people who work in chemists and pharmacies across Australia. We're saying to those people: 'You're not worthy. You're not worthy of participating in Australia's democracy, because we don't like you—because we're the Greens. We're the puritans. We're pure. We wouldn't do anything wrong.' Well, the more someone tells me that they're pure, the more someone tells me that they're righteous and the more someone tells me that they're on the side of all that is good then the more I check my back pocket to make sure I've not been pickpocketed by them and the more I make sure I go to my house and make sure my TV hasn't been nicked by them!

This is what the Greens are all about. They sit in the peanut gallery, they throw rocks and stones at the parties of government, say how terrible we all are and how terrible Australia is. They run down Australia; they run down Australia from a democratic perspective and they run down Australia from a financial perspective, because their party is the politics of grievance. Their politics is angry politics. Their politics is not about what's doing best for Australia it's about what's doing best for the Green political movement. They want to stop people who run chemists and who run pharmacies. They want to stop people who run country pubs from getting involved in the political process. This is what the Greens movement has come to.

I don't know what Bob Brown is doing at the moment, but he could basically become a wind turbine at the moment in terms of oscillating around with his disappointment with the modern Greens movement—that they've shifted from the great environmental battles of the 1980s and 1990s to become the party of just: 'Nah, the computer says no. We're a bunch of puritans. We don't want you to have fun. We don't want people who own pubs or run country pubs to get involved with the political process.'

This is a waste of the Senate's time. Go back and do better, Greens.