Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Schedule 5 won't find Dezi Freeman; let's face it. The cops have said: 'We're so desperate. We can't find this bloke, so let's insert this last-minute schedule to find Dezi Freeman. Forget about all the human rights of innocent people that this schedule violates. Let's just go find Dezi. We want the Labor government to put this last-minute schedule in. We don't want any scrutiny.' Scrutiny is what this Senate is meant to be for. You have a go about me breaking the rules of this place, yet the government breaks the rules by not telling us that this is even happening. I sit on the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, which is meant to scrutinise legislation in this place to ensure that it breaches no-one's human rights. This bill breaches so many rights of people in this country—the list is so long—and the human rights committee didn't even know that this was happening, so we weren't able to scrutinise the fact that it impinges on the rights of the child, the rights of people with disability and on so other many rights.

Minister, you say that you know all about this schedule—more than over 100 human rights organisations, including legal services, Aboriginal legal services and the Antipoverty Centre. You're dismissing and disrespecting the expertise of over 100 organisations. Shame on you! The minister responsible for this piece of legislation goes on Sky News—she doesn't mention the 100 organisations condemning schedule 5 and she doesn't mention any other politician, but she throws me under the bus, telling Sky News that I support rapists and murderers. What a disgrace! Demonising me, singling me out, goes to show how low your minister and this government will go to get this through. That's how desperate this government is to violate people's human rights.

Minister, while you're having your little chat there in your little privileged position as a minister that can shut down people who are fighting for people's human rights, you know that this will affect Aboriginal women more than anybody. You know that when the cops rock up at our door when we are a victim of violence, the cops turn us into the perpetrator. When we go on the run to escape the violence of the cops, all of those payments will be cancelled, affecting not only our children but our whole family and our whole community. Those payments don't assist just the family; they assist a whole community. You are dismissing that.

Black women will be caught up in this. Black people will be caught up in this. Innocent people will be caught up in this, just because Dezi Freeman got away from the cops. Why should one man affect the human rights of all of us? Shame on you, Minister. Shame on the fact that you're not even following your own rules and allowing us to scrutinise schedule 5 so that it doesn't violate any more human rights. Shame on the opposition when your own senators are saying: 'We didn't know about schedule 5. This is really bad. We know how much this is going to affect innocent people out there.' Hypocrites! How hypocritical that you don't support just pulling out schedule 5 so that we can properly scrutinise it and have those 100-plus agencies speak to it? You're shutting down a community who want a say on the breach of human rights in this country.

That's what we're dealing with in this country—a Labor-Lib coalition. They only get together to hurt people in this country or cause harm to our land and water. That's why this place is an absolute disgrace. That's why I carry on. We need more independents and more minor parties to hold these two criminal groups to account.