Silenced with a Rainbow Gag

There was a shocking scene in the Senate recently with which I am still trying to come to terms. Senator Pauline Hanson attempted to table a motion regarding the upcoming census and the inclusion of boxes to be ticked by those who identify as ‘transgender’ or ‘gender diverse’. Both Labor and the Greens took the extraordinary step of prohibiting the issue from even being discussed. This is an incredibly serious precedent for the Senate to have set. As Tasmanian Liberal Senator Jonathan Duniam argued:

While the Senate has the opportunity to reject a bill at the first reading stage, in practice the first reading is almost always passed without opposition and is regarded as a purely formal stage and the Coalition supports these normal procedures as we have with many Greens, Labor and other cross-bench bills that we have had opposition too. 

The normal process enables bill to be fairly considered and debated by the Senate before a substantive decision is taken and it should only be deviated from in the most extreme of circumstances…lest we deny the right of senators to even have matters debated. 

As in all cases, a vote on the first reading should not be taken as a position on the substantive legislation, especially where a bill has not had the opportunity to be subject of a normal internal process. 

As was quickly demonstrated, Senator Hanson was not only refused the opportunity to seek leave to make a short statement, but any debate on the bill was subsequently squashed. Victor Davis Hanson makes the point in his book The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalisation Are Destroying the Idea of America (Basic Books, 2021): 

Sometimes citizens can do as much harm to their commonwealth by violating custom and tradition as by breaking laws.

In practical terms, the US Constitution guarantees citizens security under a republic whose officials they alone choose and that assures them liberties. What exactly are these privileges? Everything from free speech, due process, and habeas corpus to the right to own and bear arms, to stand trial before a jury of one’s peers, and to vote without restrictions as to race, religion, and sex. America, then, is only as good as the citizens of any era who choose to preserve and to nourish it for one more generation. Republics are so often lost not over centuries but within a single decade.

This is precisely why the refusal even to consider of Hanson’s bill is so corrosive. If the Senate of our nation cannot model respectful debate and tolertate the free exchange of ideas then the very nature of our democracy is not only ‘harmed’ but irreparably undermined.