Senate debates

Thursday, 21 October 2021

Bills

COVID-19 Vaccination Status (Prevention of Discrimination) Bill 2021; Second Reading

11:33 am

Photo of Malcolm RobertsMalcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to table an explanatory memorandum relating to the bill.

Leave granted.

I table an explanatory memorandum and I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

It is with a heavy heart that I have introduced this legislation to the Senate, a Bill for an Act to protect the right of Australians to make their own health decisions in relation to COVID-19 vaccination.

I do not introduce this Bill lightly.

I introduce this Bill because I see no other alternative for halting the pandemic of discrimination that has been unleashed in Australia against individuals who don't get vaccinated against COVID-19.

It's in the best Westminster tradition that I introduce this Bill to enshrine individual rights in law.

Introducing this Bill is also a response to the disturbing trend of Australian prime ministers too frightened - or simply incapable - of exercising true leadership when their country is crying out for it.

Australians who stand for their right to choose vaccination are just like any other Australians.

They are doctors, nurses and paramedics caring for our health.

They are police officers enforcing law and keeping us safe.

They are soldiers, sailors and aviators defending our sovereignty.

They are people who work alongside us in an office, in a factory, at a mine, on a farm or in a shop.

They are volunteers helping their communities.

They are people in line with us at Centrelink, and they are people sitting next to us in corporate boardrooms.

They are people who live next door, down the street, across town and interstate.

They are people born here and overseas, indigenous and non-indigenous, men and women, adults and children.

They are our people.

They are our fellow citizens.

They are Australians just like you and me, with families and mortgages and worries and hopes and dreams.

The pandemic of discrimination which has been unleashed upon our fellow Australians has taken many forms.

They are demonised by elected governments and unelected health bureaucrats, a message amplified by a disturbingly compliant and complacent media.

They are physically beaten by police for protesting vaccine mandates and hair-trigger lockdowns destroying their families, jobs, businesses and the economy.

They have been attacked in parliaments by their own elected representatives.

They face a bleak future in which they are treated as second-class citizens unable to enjoy whatever freedoms will be returned to us - freedoms we all took for granted before 2020, like going to a movie or on an interstate holiday.

Many of these people have already lost their jobs and their livelihoods, with little to no prospects on the horizon.

Many more jobs are under threat from this discrimination.

Last week the Northern Territory government ordered people to receive a jab by 13 November if their jobs involved public interaction.

Not content with this demand, people were told they would not be allowed at work without it and would be hit with a 5000 dollar fine.

This is pure, naked coercion - not only will you lose your job and your income for standing for your right to choose, but you will have your savings account cleaned out also, right when you need it.

In other words, do what you're told or we'll put you out on the street.

Or in prison, maybe, if you don't have 5000 dollars just lying around.

Not a lot of Territorians do.

All this discrimination and coercion against people who won't be vaccinated against COVID-19, which has affected just over 200 people in the Territory and caused no deaths.

It's appalling.

Influenza kills people in the Territory - one person died last year and five the year before - but similar discrimination and coercion is not in place for people who won't get a flu jab.

No, discrimination is being solely reserved for those who won't get the COVID-19 jabs.

All of this discrimination has amounted to one clear message: the rights of the individual will be protected only so long as they do not conflict with the state.

There is nothing - not even a global pandemic - more dangerous to a free society.

Our nation's history is replete with people who recognised this danger and acted, from the miners who rebelled on the Victorian goldfields and the drafters of our Constitution, to the young men and women who enlisted to fight wars against fascist or communist tyranny and the legislators who passed landmark laws against racial and sexual discrimination.

Our nation's history is also replete with the extension of equal rights to disenfranchised sections of Australian society - firstly men without property, then women, then indigenous Australians.

This legislation follows this proud tradition but, more importantly, will help prevent us from going backwards on protecting individual human rights in Australia.

This legislation is all about principle, something which has been abandoned by the major political parties.

There sit senators of the Labor Party, the so-called champions of the working class, the political arm of the union movement now under attack from its very own members for failing to stand up for their right to choose.

They won't act to prevent discrimination against Australians standing for the right to choose.

There sit senators of the Liberal Party, the so-called champions for personal responsibility and economic integrity, failing to stand up for personal responsibility and spending public money like none have done before.

I recently asked the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Birmingham, if the government would mandate COVID-19 vaccination for Liberal MPs.

His response was that it was a personal choice for Liberal MPs.

So the privileged members of the government are allowed the right to choose but not millions of members of the public.

How does this make the government anything more than a gang of hypocritical control freaks?

They won't act to prevent discrimination against Australians standing for the right to choose.

Only One Nation is acting to prevent discrimination against Australians standing for the right to choose, because only One Nation stands firmly for this principle.

It is the birthright of every Australian, and we must be able to exercise it safe from threats to our livelihoods and public freedoms.

Safe from discrimination.

Discrimination used to be a dirty word, but this pandemic has exposed it as a new virtue to be signalled.

How far we have fallen in this pandemic, which has left its mark on all of us.

One Nation is determined this mark does not linger in the form of ongoing discrimination against Australians standing for the right to choose vaccination.

The COVID-19 Vaccination Status (Prevention of Discrimination) Bill 2021 will prohibit discrimination based on individuals' COVID-19 vaccination status by the Commonwealth, state and territory governments, statutory authorities, local government and businesses.

It will make it unlawful for the Commonwealth to discriminate against a person on the basis of whether the person has received a COVID-19 vaccination.

It will make it unlawful for the Commonwealth to enter an agreement with, provide public funds or grant licences, permits or authorisations to entities if they are reasonably likely to discriminate against a person on the basis of whether the person has received a COVID-19 vaccination.

The Bill has the same provisions for state and territory governments and local government.

This legislation will make it unlawful for a person to discriminate against another person - in relation to the first person employing the other person, on the basis of whether the other person has received a COVID-19 vaccination.

It will also make it unlawful for a business to discriminate in the provision of goods or services, or access to business premises.

This principle will also apply to volunteer bodies with respect to people's membership, participation in volunteer activities and the provision of goods or services.

The penalties will be steep for a breach of this law.

This is because the right to choose is fundamental and must not be compromised, regardless of the choice that is made.

It's a shame, really, that I am compelled to remind the Senate the right to choose is the foundation on which democracies like Australia are built.

It's the reason each of us are here - because Australians freely chose us to represent them.

You may not always agree with the free choices other Australians make, but that doesn't entitle us to take their right to choose away from them.

And it most definitely doesn't entitle us to punish those whose free choices we do not agree with by taking away their livelihoods and restricting freedoms other Australians have.

And it may very well be unconstitutional to take the freedom to choose away.

I draw Senators' attention to Section 51 (23A) of the Australian Constitution which says Parliament can make laws with respect to:

" the provision of maternity allowances, widows' pensions, child endowment, unemp loyment, pharmaceutical sickness and hospital benefits, medical and dental services ( but no so as to authorise any form of civil conscription ) "

What is the vaccination mandate if not the conscription of the Australian people in a war against the coronavirus?

The response to this pandemic has already imposed restrictions on movement and basic freedoms not seen in Australia since the Second World War.

It's also been replete with wartime propaganda exaggerating the danger of the enemy that is the coronavirus.

It's only right for Australians to question much of the propaganda which has been selectively spoon-fed to them by unelected health bureaucrats and populist premiers.

Fatalities in particular are an open question when the average age of people we're told have died from the coronavirus is 86, higher than the average life expectancy for Australians.

Did they die from COVID-19 or with COVID-19?

When a patient in their 90s in palliative care is said to have died from the coronavirus it's only fair to assume other factors were in play.

This is not a standalone case.

Many cases were reported as a COVID death when they had many underlying health issues.

I suspect this is a reality which health bureaucrats are keen to hide from the Australian people who have borne the brunt of hair-trigger lockdowns imposed by premiers running rampant in the face of the Prime Minister's impotence.

We hear more about COVID deaths than we hear about deaths caused by adverse reactions to the vaccine. Why don't we be utterly honest with the people?

This gutless PM's lack of leadership and authority is enabling these rogue premiers to destroy families, jobs and the economy with lockdowns while Scott Morrison, in his impotence, turns a blind eye.

One Nation is not blind to the plight of Australians suffering under lockdowns and losing their jobs for standing for the right to choose.

We have been told a load of rubbish and exaggerated figures from so-called health experts from the beginning.

I have had enough, and so have the people.

One Nation stands with them.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.