Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

I wasn't going to speak on this amendment, but I just got off the phone with my wife and my daughter, and it made me think that it would be a good thing to respond to some of the accusations that have been made about this organisation. Equality Australia has helped my family an enormous amount. In fact, we wouldn't be married or have a daughter if it wasn't for Equality Australia. The work that they do to help people in this country who still face discrimination every single day and still face an incredible amount of mental health harm from exposure to comments like this is exactly why Equality Australia should be supported through this bill and why the amendment proposed by the coalition, not One Nation, should be voted down.

The other thing I want to say about this amendment—I'm not going to debate you on the validity of my family and the love that we have. That's not a debate that I'm going to have with you today. We won that debate in this country many years ago, in this chamber and in the chamber over there and in the streets outside. We won that debate because Equality Australia brought people together from all across the country. They brought people from corporate life, from unions, from sporting organisations and from every single part of this political life. The point that I wanted to make is that, now, the modern Liberal Party is moving motions like this.

Back in the day, when we were debating whether I would have the ability to marry the person I love, those on the other marched with us. They marched with Equality Australia, and now they want to take them down. That's how much modern Liberal Party has changed because they're fighting with you—a culture war—to make sure that you don't take seats off them, instead of doing what's right and standing up for people who need the help of an organisation like Equality Australia. I can't believe that, in a bill like this, looking at superannuation, the Liberal Party has managed to find another culture war. We see this all the time. Whether it's LGBTQIA communities, multicultural communities or First Nations people, there isn't a culture war in this place that the Liberal Party isn't prepared to fight so they can take on One Nation.

We will always stand up for people in the LGBTQIA community. I am very proud to stand up for my family and my community, and that's why we will be opposing this amendment.