Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is an epidemic damage of violence in this country that shames us all. It's been going on for far too long and it needs to end. We know that gay men are being lured through dating apps into snuff-video-style bashings. They are set up, they are ambushed, and they are viciously exploited by extremists and thugs who think hatred is a virtue. The technology might be new, but the brutality has been there for many decades. This is the same toxic masculinity that fuelled Sydney's gay gang murders in the 1970s and 1980s. We've seen it right through, ongoing until today—that same ideology that says that some people are less worthy than others just because of their sexuality, the same bile that tells insecure young men that violence proves something.

These bait-and-bash attacks are being reported across Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and the ACT. So we know the problem is big, but we just do not know how big, because many crimes go unreported because victims carry shame that is not theirs—shame that rightfully sits with the perpetrators. A 2022 Sydney inquiry heard police evidence that, for decades, an average of 20 gay men were bashed every day. That is thousands in a year; that is hundreds of thousands over the decades. And we have a violent epidemic against trans folk as well.

Whether it's gay men, whether it's trans folk, whether it's anyone else in the queer community, they deserve urgency and protection. The Greens are here, and we are demanding greater action.