Page 90 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 11 February 2020
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
In Canberra, in Australia and globally, the climate action movement has never given up on our collective hope for serious and urgent climate action at every level of government. As the Greens know, it is this grassroots commitment that has so often made the difference when it comes to bringing about significant change. This grassroots commitment and action is one of the reasons why we here in the ACT have been able to achieve so much more than in some other jurisdictions on climate actions.
With hindsight, it is often easy to know which side of history to be on. I highly doubt that there is anyone in this chamber who would support slavery or question the right of women and indigenous people to vote. It now seems barbaric to us that a civil war was fought over the slavery issue and that women were driven to starving themselves in prison to draw attention to their cause. But things seem to look different when they are actually happening. Right now we are very clearly seeing people come down on what I strongly believe will turn out to be the wrong side of history.
In Queensland a few months ago, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced a suite of new laws to be fast-tracked through the Queensland parliament in order to crack down on protests, citing a single ambiguous incident from 2005 in which a protestor allegedly claimed to have aerosol cans attached to a locking device. Queensland’s human rights commissioner has come out strongly in opposition to the proposed bill. In New South Wales, Premier Gladys Berejiklian labelled Labor leader Michael Daley’s support of the September 20 student climate strike as “appalling”. She claimed to support their right to have views about the world and express themselves, but not during school. I believe that there are people in this chamber who have expressed some similar views. On the ABC’s The Drum on October 13 last year, Georgina Downer self-righteously and with no evidence claimed that Extinction Rebellion protesters were impeding the passage of emergency vehicles and endangering lives.
It is no accident that I have chosen to highlight the anti-protest views of three women here. Premiers Palaszczuk and Berejiklian and would-be federal parliamentarian Downer would not be where they are today without the efforts of women like Mary Smith, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Catherine Helen Spence and Henrietta Dugdale. These are all women who challenged the prevailing system and angered those in power as they argued for change. They protested. Yet, having benefited from the willingness of their historical sisters to protest for women’s rights, these women are now attempting to clamp down on vital protest movements that we see today.
The most important of these are climate protests by thousands of environment groups as well as Extinction Rebellion, Stop Adani, the School Strike 4 Climate and many more. This is a truly global movement. But there are and will continue to be other issues on which people’s voices need to be raised peacefully in public in order to be heard. These are the voices that need to be heard, and heard repeatedly, in order for action to be taken. If we constrain, limit or suppress the right of ordinary people to peaceful protest we are not only stalling the kind of focus we have all benefited from up to this point; we are actively moving ourselves backwards.
Here in the ACT we need to affirm and protect this fundamental right so that our society can continue to positively evolve. This society needs to support our citizens in
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video