Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to try to cover a few different topics in my 10 minutes this evening. I'd firstly like to particularly note and pay tribute to a whole range of people in the community on the Gold Coast who have worked for a number of years to protect a small but nonetheless special piece of land known as Black Swan Lake. This area in Bundall, on the Gold Coast—very close, unfortunately for it, to the Gold Coast Turf Club—is a freshwater lake, home to 40 species of wild birds. It was excavated over 30 years ago. It has regrowth bushland at the western end.

In 2014, the Gold Coast city council gave permission for it to be filled in for a car park. The community stopped the trucks at that time. The trucks arrived to start filling it in, in spite of the presence of nesting swans, and the community managed to prevent that. They've been fighting to protect that lake ever since. Despite that, the Gold Coast city council in 2016 gave the turf club control of the lake and gave the turf club the right to fill it in. The community has continued to fight since that time, and, even when the trucks finally started arriving and started pouring the dirt into that lake, they kept fighting. And it is wonderful to see that the filling in of that lake has stopped, at least for the moment.

A number of people on the Gold Coast city council, including the mayor, have links to the Gold Coast Turf Club. The Crime and Corruption Commission in Queensland is investigating a number of things in regard to the Gold Coast city council, including some of the issues around the decision-making to allow not just the filling in of the lake but also the granting of that area to the Gold Coast Turf Club.

The petition in support of protecting Black Swan Lake on the Gold Coast now has over 31,000 signatures. I visited that area a few weeks ago on a particularly rainy day and, despite the rain, was met by a large number of local people. I saw the swans on the lake. I saw the destruction that had already started to be wreaked on that area. I urge the Gold Coast city council to reconsider their decision. I gather they're meeting again this Friday. I'm sure the local community will once again be present to ask them to reconsider that. This is a classic case of local residents having to raise money and launch campaigns because their so-called representatives are more interested in putting the interests of their donors and the corporate sector ahead of the local community and what it wants to see for its own area.

The lake is not toxic; it's proven to be an effective way to control pollution from the neighbouring horse stables, according to independent scientific tests. An area like this is a rare piece, now, in the Gold Coast area—at least in the built-up area—of a natural environment that's home to so much bird life and other local wildlife, including migratory birds. For this to be filled in with a car park is extraordinary. For the Gold Coast Turf Club to be required to pay the city council just $1 a year under a licence deal to use that area once it is filled in is a travesty, to put it politely. As a property analyst told the Gold Coast Bulletin, that area:

… is worth a fortune. To say it's worth between $6 million to $12 million is extremely conservative. This is an excellent area to develop.

For the Gold Coast Turf Club, it is $1 a year. Again, this is an excellent example of the local community not giving up in the face of such things.

I'd also like to mention, completely separately, that today is 15 years to the day since the Senate passed a motion—Senator Moore was here, actually, opposing the then government's decision—to launch the war on Iraq and to be part of the invasion forces of Iraq. This decision was made despite the fact that the Senate and the parliament were actually in the process, and had been for a number of days, of debating whether or not our country should be supporting that. So, whilst our parliament's representatives were debating whether or not our country should be involved in this war, our government decided to let it rip anyway. They not only ignored the parliament; they ignored millions of Australians—a clear majority of Australians—who said, 'This is a really, really bad idea.'

Unfortunately, we've all been paying the consequences since then. A resolution that was passed by this Senate exactly 15 years ago today, moved by Senator Faulkner with some additional amendments by me and Senator Brown, explicitly expressed opposition to that invasion and explicitly called for the troops to be returned. It was ignored by the government. More importantly, the community was ignored. This was a perfect example—if the word 'perfect' can be applied to something so abominable—of why all of our political parties, and our governments, in particular, need to listen to the community, particularly when the message is so unbelievably clear. Yet, the interests of the friends of the government of the day were more important than the community that they were supposed to represent.

That brings me to the final matter that I want to mention this evening, which is the extraordinary motion that was passed by the Senate today. I was surprised it passed. It was moved by Senator Macdonald, who felt it was sufficiently important to attack, misrepresent and slander teachers in Queensland and the Queensland Teachers' Union for distributing a sticker of the Eureka flag to teachers in schools in Queensland. According to Senator Macdonald, schools should be a place for learning rather than politics. As was proven, the majority of the Senate agreed—One Nation, unsurprisingly, once again maintaining their alliance with the Liberals at every opportunity.

Having been a high school teacher—and, I should declare for the record, having been a member of the Queensland Teachers' Union—I don't know how you teach history without teaching politics. I don't know how you teach about society without teaching politics. I'm sorry if this is too complex a concept for those who supported a motion that seeks to suppress freedom of speech, but you can talk about political issues to school students—or adults—without saying, 'You must vote for this party.' You can talk about concepts. This idea that students—particularly in high school, but of any age—are just empty vessels who can't figure things out for themselves perhaps shows the narrowness of the thinking of those who supported this motion.

As a history teacher, how are you supposed to teach the history of the Eureka Stockade and the Eureka flag without talking about the politics of it?

Why is it that this flag has survived for all this time? Why is it that the union movement that has fought for the rights of people to get a fair day's wage for a fair day's pay has survived for so long? How do you teach that to students? The clear fact for the coalition, One Nation and all those people that align with them is they don't want students to know about how to ensure that they can express their own views, stand up for themselves, ask for their rights, ask for a fair day's pay, ask to not be exploited and demand they not be exploited. That is actually what that motion is about. It's not about preventing politics from coming into school curriculums; it's about preventing students from understanding that they can have a say over their own future.

It is the union movement and the people who have acted collectively that have ensured that we have a fair day's pay. Australia led the world on the eight-hour day. Australia has led the world in regard to ensuring that people are not exploited in such an extraordinary way. Of course the coalition, speaking in the interests of their corporate masters, don't want people to know about this. They don't want anybody to know about this. They certainly don't want students to know about this. That is what is going on in regard to this motion. Particularly at a time when we have wage stagnation, what we are getting from the coalition is a desire to prevent people from even being able to discuss this issue, to ensure that those in society who are pushing for this are silenced. (Time expired)

Senate adjourned at 21 : 51