David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Beth Heinrich's story is one of courage, persistence, and a decades-long fight for justice that has brought her, at last, to a moment of recognition, with a long-overdue apology from the Anglican Church being given her on Sunday. Beth was just 14 years old when Donald Shearman, a married Anglican minister, began abusing her. She was a child. He was a man placed in a position of profound trust within his community, the church and her life, and what he did to her was a crime. But the betrayal of the church continued long after this. On Sunday, the Brisbane archdiocese finally apologised to Beth. I was honoured to be invited to join her for this apology. Beth, I'm sorry I couldn't make it, but I'm so glad you did. She told me that there were 'two main reasons I went to Brisbane: to inspire others to keep fighting for justice, and to accept an apology from the archbishop for the contemptible way I was treated by the diocese, which began in December 1995 with then-Archbishop Hollingworth'.

On Christmas Eve of 1994, Beth's world had fallen apart when her son Paul had been diagnosed with leukaemia and was not likely to survive. He died not long after. That's the context in which Beth reached out to the Anglican Church—a mother in crisis, grieving, desperate, and completely alone. She told me, 'I don't want to complain but to receive the help I needed.'

Beth made the journey to see Archbishop Hollingworth in Brisbane. She drove from Adelaide to Wagga, took a coach to Sydney and then flew to Brisbane. The church wouldn't pay for her support person, so she went alone. When she arrived for her appointment, Hollingworth told her, 'I can't meet with you; I have a pressing engagement.' They knew her son had died. They knew what she'd been through, and they turned her away at the door.

It didn't end there. Hollingworth wrote to her in February 1996 saying he had considered her story and didn't find it compelling. 'He didn't listen to my story,' Beth says. 'He didn't even meet with me. Hollingworth is a liar.' The man who would go on to become Australia's governor-general looked at a grieving mother who had been abused as 14-year-old girl by one of his ministers, and he chose to protect the institution. Beth has never stopped fighting. She says, 'When I finally recovered from the psychological shock of the disdainful way I was treated in 1995 and 1996, I became so angry. I thought: "They're not going to treat me like this. I'm going to keep at them."' And, when someone like Beth says that to you, you'd better believe her.

The apology from Archbishop Greaves in Brisbane this month matters. But, as Beth says, accountability has to go further. Peter Hollingworth needs to be taken off his continuing governor-general's pension. Beth Heinrich has earned the right to say that. Allowing him to continue to receive this lavish public benefit, given how he failed a survivor like Beth, is unconscionable. Beth, your courage is extraordinary.

I want to speak today about the imminent retirement of John Menadue AO. John is, of course, well known as a former secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet under the Whitlam and Fraser governments. He was later appointed by Malcolm Fraser as Australian Ambassador to Japan and continued in a number of very senior public sector and business positions. I don't have time to read his full CV here.

His contributions beyond the public sector are also significant. He was a founding chair of New Matilda and a founder and fellow of the Centre for Policy Development. In recent years, John's website, Pearls and Irritations, has become an incredible and integral part of our democratic landscape. The analysis provided by Pearls and Irritations on contemporary issues is sophisticated and deeply necessary. Thank goodness he's made that place a place for debates and discussions that really should be happening here in this parliament. Thank goodness, too, that he launched provocations that too often will be shied away from by an increasingly risk-averse media.

Finally, from a personal perspective, I've been lucky to speak with John directly and benefit from his wide experience and his razor-sharp analysis—and it's still razor-sharp. He has big shoes to fill. Thank you, John, for your extraordinary contribution to this country.

Glenlee in Lugarno, in my beautiful home city of Sydney, is a precious and irreplaceable site—one I've worked alongside the local community to protect for many years. It holds profound Aboriginal cultural significance, yet it stands on the brink of destruction from an imminent development application which it seems both major parties, at state and federal level, don't care about. It's also just an extremely beautiful and clearly treasured place nestled on the side of the river. Georges River Council has tried to protect the site, and good on them. They've been denied access, though, to conduct heritage assessments, and the New South Wales minister won't intervene without a DA on the table. And our federal heritage laws simply are not filling that gap. Juukan Gorge and so much other destruction of Aboriginal heritage should have been a wake-up call, but it hasn't been, and our laws are still not fit for protecting even important sites like this. So I'm calling on the federal government to urgently progress new cultural heritage laws and to take Glenlee's nomination for the National Heritage List seriously before it is too late.

Medicinal cannabis genuinely helps veterans manage a range of serious health conditions—I know; they've told me. It's clearly critical for many of our veterans, yet DVA has still somehow found a way to administer the scheme like a complete circus. With one day's notice, the DVA cut off access through telehealth and online forms with no warning and, apparently, no plan, and they also flat-out banned gummies. For veterans in rural areas or without easy access to DVA approved providers, which is many of them, this isn't an inconvenience; it's being left without medicine critical for their health that was covered just the day before, with no notice given. DVA says this is about harm reduction, but its policy is actually stricter than the TGA's standards. Why does the government keep mucking about with medicinal cannabis without thinking, apparently, of the human beings they're harming by doing so? It's time to fix that scheme for veterans, urgently—and let's be real: let's fix it for everyone else.

Marwan Barghouti has been held in an Israeli prison for over two decades. He's widely regarded as one of the most significant Palestinian political leaders alive and he's currently on hunger strike. He has been subject to brutality of a scale that is hard to imagine, much of it unwitnessed and in secret in Israeli prisons, for the crime of being a proud Palestinian. The international community has a long history of recognising that imprisoning political figures does not resolve conflicts; it entrenches them. Barghouti's unconditional release is not just a matter of justice for one man; it's a question of what kind of future is possible for the Palestinian people. As a member of the Australian Greens and as the party's foreign affairs spokesperson, I'm calling on this parliament to raise this case urgently and on the Australian government to use whatever diplomatic weight it has to advocate for his freedom and for independent monitoring of his health and prison conditions right now.

But this must not stop with one man. There are thousands of Palestinians, some young boys and young girls, held without charge and without trial. I have been and seen the obscenity of the so-called judicial system in Israel and in occupied Palestine. I've seen kids dragged before an Israeli major who spoke to them in a foreign language, literally in shipping containers, where they process Palestinian prisoners in trials that can last 30 seconds or less. And, if any Palestinian dares to try and plead for an actual defence, they're punished with even greater sentences. It's not a judicial system. It's not a justice system as we would understand it. Did I mention there are thousands of Palestinians who have been dragged through that injustice system, many of them not even with that pretence? They just get taken off the streets and put in forever detention—held without trial. Marwan Barghouti is just one of thousands, but he represents this obscenity against the Palestinian people. They are being held and imprisoned for who they are and what they believe. That is arbitrary detention. Australia and Australian politicians have always said that they stand against arbitrary detention. I'll tell you what: it's time we acted like it.

Senate adjourned at 21:49