Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

On the day before One Nation leader Senator Pauline Hanson returns to the Senate, I'd like to reflect on just how Australia has changed during her absence. If a week is a long time in politics, seven sitting days was a generation, sufficient to span the most fundamental realignment of Australian politics in 80 years—which Senator Hanson was free to facilitate, thanks to the Senate suspending her for those seven sitting days. The ALP-LNP uniparty still doesn't understand the concept of unintended consequences. Everyday Australians were outraged at the suspension, and their actions inspired many to speak out in her place.

Senator Hanson left with the LNP coalition intact, and she led a party of four senators. She now returns, seven sitting days later, with five members of parliament and party status, and riding a tidal wave of success. Meanwhile, the opposition is in tatters, and the National Party's conscience and engine room, former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, has brought his impressive policy and political skills to One Nation.

In May last year, One Nation received the first preference of six per cent of Australian voters. In November last year, that was 15 per cent. Today, polls show it sitting at 26 per cent, and the pundits have stopped asking if One Nation can win lower house seats and instead are trying to work out how many we'll win.

Those seven sitting days saw an Islamic terrorist attack on Australian soil in Bondi and the abject failure of this Prime Minister to show compassion towards the victims, or accountability, or justice against the perpetrators. We've seen rushed legislation that ostensibly protected the public, yet, in reality, took away freedoms we all used to enjoy. One Nation would have taken away the perpetrators, and those who incited their terror, and would have left Australians alone to enjoy their lives in peace, freedom and prosperity—concepts which seem foreign to the uniparty.

The bill that Senator Hanson presented last November was designed to ban face-coverings on Commonwealth property and has proven prescient—the right measure at the right time. It would have not only unmasked Islamists; it would have unmasked Nazis—a point the internet failed to grasp, because nobody bothered to read the bill. This was not an anti-Islamic measure; it was a measure against those on both sides of the political spectrum who would seek to harm Australians. It's a fundamental belief of One Nation that all Australians should stand equal before the law. No religion should be untouchable. No race or gender should be favoured over another.

A One Nation government would sweep away DEI, gender quotas and the gravy train of victimhood. We have one law which should apply equally to all. This is why Senator Pauline Hanson made her stand—all the work that went into that bill in One Nation's office, all the to-and-fro which went on with the Office of Parliamentary Counsel and the hardworking staff of the drafting office—to produce a bill that was conforming, constitutional and within the Senate's accepted purview. (Time expired)