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

Back in 2024, Senator Faruqi and I moved a motion to deal with racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination in this place—here, in the Senate. Parliament should set the standard for the rest of the country. But, with what goes on in this chamber, it's no wonder that racism is on the rise out there. We wanted an inquiry to look at how the Senate's rules could be updated to deal with language, behaviour, decision-making and practices that are sexist, racist, exclusionary or discriminatory. This was about making sure that women and people from different backgrounds can be safe at work—people like me, Senator Faruqi and Senator Payman, and there are many more in this place.

It was about setting the standard for the rest of the country. It was exactly what recommendation 10 of the Set the standard report called for. The way we proposed it back then was we wanted a public hearing with people who are affected. We wanted the crossbench to be part of it, and we wanted a report by a set date. Most of the crossbench supported this. What Labor did serves as a perfect example of the very problem we were pointing to, and it said everything about how gammon their commitment to tackling racism is. They teamed up with their coalition mates and rewrote the whole motion and then worked together to pass their weakened version, despite crossbench opposition.

They stitched it up so that Senator Faruqi, Senator Payman or I would not be invited to participate in the process. Public hearings were scrapped, guaranteed crossbench participation was scrapped and the deadline was scrapped. It was to be dealt with by the Procedures Committee, which operates behind closed doors with no transparency. The two major parties here took a plan developed by two brown women that was supposed to confront racism and handed it to the mostly white committee dominated by Labor and the coalition and completely blocked us out of the process. The only person of colour on that committee is Senator Wong, and her job is clearly to defend the government and the status quo.

Labour's shameful manoeuvre was all about trying to make it look like Labor cares, because they knew that voting against our motion wouldn't look good, but they also needed a way to make the issue go away and silence the brown women in this place who were calling for improvements in our workplace. We saw straight through it at that time. We knew it was a move to bury our concerns, and—surprise, surprise—here we are, over a year later, and the closed door committee this went to hasn't even met to discuss this. Not once have they met. The inquiry was supposed to report in March last year, well before the election, yet nothing was done at all. With the end of the last parliament, the inquiry lapsed. You can't even find a trace of it on the committee's website. It was completely swept under the carpet, and, of course, there was no attempt from Labor to restart the inquiry.

Today, in the last hour, a motion by Senator Faruqi and me to re-refer the same inquiry with exactly the same wording that Labor changed it to in 2024 was voted down by Labor. The government won't even support its own words anymore. This serves as a perfect example of the issues we were pointing to in the first place. This is about the way this Senate is run to silence, sideline, gaslight and undermine women of colour who work here, particularly when we raise issues of racism. This isn't just negligence, laziness or forgetfulness. This is exactly what systemic racism looks like in action. So there you go. We still have a racist Senate, with no action and empty words from the Labor government once again.

Senate adjourned at 19:44