Senator BROWN (5:24 PM) —Quite the contrary, Senator Woodley and the Democrats have every right to represent a large section of feeling in the Australian community that things have changed dramatically for the worse in our society in the last two years not only in terms of the public discourse, but also in terms of the feeling of security that many people had before and the feeling that we did have one nation but it is now being torn to shreds. That threat and that lack of security is going to be a very difficult thing to overcome.

At the same time as the member for Oxley, Pauline Hanson, was giving her inaugural speech in the House of Representatives, I, as the first Australian Green in this parliament, was giving a contrary speech in the Senate. In that speech I spoke about the need for compassion between we human beings and also a new regard for this planet of ours. It was ignored by the media. But the media did take up the racist epithets which were being brought to the surface in the other place by Ms Hanson.

Let me say at the outset, we human beings who want a civil society do so with great forbearance, because inherent in all of us is a certain wish to be secure from people we see as different. The civilising motive is to keep a cap on that. The need to put energy into that is a permanent thing. What Ms Hanson and One Nation are doing is removing that cap or at least releasing some of the energy that goes into civilising society, making us less civil—less civil towards people within our own ranks who we might think are different and less civil towards people in the rest of the world who we know are different very often in appearance, language, culture and the way they celebrate life.

In doing this, we fail to recognise that the very variety of cultures and human beings on this planet is the spice of life for all of us, just as the very variety of nature on this planet itself and its diversity, which is now under such awesome threat from the environmental degradation of our age, is. It is this great variety that we can celebrate in life itself.

From that moment in October 1996, the responsibility for the failure to keep the cap on can be sheeted home very strongly to the Prime Minister and the government of the day. Twice at that time in this place I called for the Prime Minister to name Ms Hanson and condemn her bigotry. At first I could not get support. Later on it was blocked because it was seen as a stunt. Well, it was not. I could see what was going to happen. I could see the sort of divided society and change coming down the line that we have now to endure.

But, as I am standing here in the Senate this evening, an act of great intolerance, an act which I believe is racist, an act which I believe panders to the lowest common denominator in terms of regard for the first Australians, is occurring in that we are immi nently going to hear the Prime Minister of this country say that the parliament is coming back to deal with an agreement with Senator Harradine on Wik. Let me say two things about that. The aim of this is to take away the rights of indigenous people in this country. Already the parliament has taken away their rights to negotiate on almost all forms of land use—sure, recognise their ownership and prior occupation of the land, but then say that they have no right to have a say in what happens to that land. It is disempowerment by parliament.

The one last piece that was left intact in this place, because the Labor Party supported it and Senator Harradine supported it, was the right to have a say on mining. It was whittled down to a fraction, five per cent maybe, of the land use changes that are going to occur on indigenous land in the coming century. What this agreement that Senator Harradine is striking with the government does is take away even that right. It leaves the indigenous people of this nation disempowered. That is racism, and it is coming from the government of this country.

Taking away people's rights is an act of racism when it applies to one particular part of the community, as it does here. That is why the Prime Minister does not want the Greens in here. He would prefer One Nation. That is going to be an albatross around Senator Harradine's neck, because when it comes to this issue we do not need One Nation in here. Senator Harradine is doing that job of giving away the indigenous people's rights through his own act of perfidy while this debate is taking place. (Time expired)