Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) | Hansard source

Anyway, the fact is that we've brought in hate-speech laws and we're shutting down people. I tried to put freedom of speech in our constitution. I moved a motion in the parliament to have it put, by referendum, to the people. That was stopped; no-one wanted that. You voted against that. You're controlling people more and more with your laws and legislation, and people are frightened to say or do anything whatsoever. We are not building resilience; we're protecting everyone. We're putting them in cottonwool. 'You can't do this; you can't say that.' That's the problem with a lot of these kids: they have built up no resilience whatsoever.

We have to get back to the larrikinism that we had in Australia. We used to have Paul Hogan, Bert Newton and Norman Gunston. We could actually have a laugh at ourselves with the things that were on TV. That's all gone because you're offending someone, and this is another form of shutting people down. Yes, if it is offensive, it can be taken down. We do have the laws, and I don't believe in anything being put up that's going to create violence. I think that's wrong. But we've got to realise who we are. People aren't stupid out there. Give them some credit to actually look at this and understand. They know I'm not this leader of a bloody band singing a song on a stage. People can work a lot out for themselves.

So stop shutting people down, because that's what I see happening in this parliament all the time. Let people have an opinion and have a say. The same as you nearly did in this parliament by bringing the Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024—that's what you want it to do. Again, you can't control the people. People must have a right to work it out for themselves. You can't put them in cottonwool and baby them. That's what democracy is about. It's about freedom of choice. It's about rule of law. It's not about parliaments controlling them, and if we keep going down the way that we're going—we are becoming such a socialist country. That's where we're headed, and that's not what the people want.

People want their freedom: freedom of expression, freedom of choice. Let's get back to the Australia that we used to have. I know damn well people would be a lot happier in their own life—without being controlled.