Warwick Stacey (NSW, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

Acknowledgements of and welcomes to country may have started with good intentions. Like so many good ideas, however, they've been pushed far beyond their original scope and have become tools of division. Disguised as innocent and harmless formalities, acknowledgements and welcomes to country are now part of the radical left's progressive agenda to divide Australians. In acknowledging only one group in this way, all other Australians are excluded.

Australians expressed a comprehensive rejection of civic, political and racial division in the failed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice referendum. It is now incumbent on the parliament to act in accordance with the will of the Australian people. Australians, whether born here or born elsewhere, neither need nor want to be welcomed to their own country. These are exercises in virtue signalling and they keep disunity alive. Senator Pauline Hanson has shown great principle in politely declining to attend welcome to country ceremonies and in turning her back on such ceremonies. Her stance reflects an increasingly popular sentiment.

The practice of welcome to country was invented in the 1970s. It and associated statements have become weapons in a culture war that seeks to divide Australia. They imply the Australian nation is illegitimate. Australians are sick of these divisive culture wars from the radical left.

The Western tradition has given us and the world the highest levels of human flourishing in history. This is based on our Judaeo-Christian beginnings, representative democracy, the separation of church and state, free-market economics, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of movement and freedom of association. Our challenge now is to unite behind our foundational Western values and traditions and to abandon the hollow and divisive acknowledgements of and welcomes to country. (Time expired)