Page 3313 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 21 August 2019
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If people are employed, particularly in sensitive areas, and they think that they can go off and be sneaky and cute leaking information or publishing information, or tweeting, whatever it might be, it’s unacceptable, and we’ve been very clear about that …
He went on to say:
We’re not going to have people who are involved in running political campaigns whilst they’re employed by the Australian taxpayer, campaigns against the government of the day …
That is just horrific, and it is actually an issue that is worthy of a separate discussion. I do want to note in particular the federal government’s attitude of hostility towards anyone who does not support its policies. It does not even support public servants engaging in political activity in their private lives if that activity does not accord with the government’s political view.
I note that, apart from earlier this afternoon, there has been a lot of talk about “vegans” in recent months. It seems like every second media headline or political quip is something about vegans. Some commentators and politicians seemed to take a political interest and cynical delight in emphasising that “vegans” were undertaking the recent protests. Even Mr Wall said to the media recently, “There should be no place in the ACT for ‘vegan vandals’.” It was not about “criminals” or “trespassers”, or even just an ordinary, normal, common or garden vandal; it was specifically about “vegan vandals”.
I do not really know what more to say, particularly after the earlier debate. But after the earlier debate, I have probably already put on record my support for people who do go to the effort of being vegan, or to the effort of just having one meal that is vegan—eating less animal and more plant-based food. By changing their diets to eliminate meat and other products, vegans are actually doing a good thing.
Shane talked about this, and I talked about it earlier: vegans are people who care about the planet and care about animal welfare. Vegans are opting out of food production that is in many ways exploitative of animals and is failing animal welfare standards. More veganism would also be a great help to the planet, given that human activity is currently steering all of us—not just some of us, all of us—towards a climate change disaster. As Mr Morrison might say it, “How good are vegans?”
I was going to talk about the IPCC report, but we talked about that earlier. Suffice to say that we are going to have to change our land use and our diets if we want to avoid the planet literally cooking.
I will not repeat all of the stuff from earlier today. I will conclude by reiterating that we do not support this motion. It proposes unnecessary, over-the-top laws. Quite frankly, anyone who is concerned about this issue would be better off spending their time working to improve animal welfare laws and transitioning to a more sustainable and humane system of farming. Once that happens, this sort of trespassing will not happen.
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