The Hon. Michael Ronaldson, Senator for Victoria
First Speech - 10/08/2005
Senator RONALDSON (Victoria) (5.00
pm)—Thank you, Mr President, and I congratulate
you on your re-election. This place
only has the powers specifically enumerated
in our Constitution. For that I am grateful. I
am grateful for both the wisdom of our
founding fathers and the generations of Australians
who have seen fit in so many referenda
to reject the request of rapacious governments
to increase the power of the federal
legislature. I am grateful that the powers of
this place are limited because, like the founding
fathers of the 1890s, Australians of today
are cynical about the use of powers of this or
any place to do good.
I am a liberal and I sit proudly on this side
of the chamber. I am a classical liberal, economically
and politically. As such I believe
first and foremost in the innate goodness and
sense of the Australian people. More than
that, liberalism is based on trust—trust in
ordinary Australians, both as individuals and
as a collective group. This trust in ordinary
Australians manifests itself in a preference
for minimal and dispersed government. This
trust in individual choice means a recognition
that the free market is not only good but
is necessary for the creation of individual
choice and private wealth, which are social
goods in their own right.
However, while this place’s powers are
circumscribed, they are sufficient. The Australian
people’s grant of power to this place
carries with it all that is proper and necessary
for us to do our job. While I have just spoken
about the importance of the curtailment of
this place’s power, just as important, though,
is the necessity for us to use the powers we
have been granted to deliver on our promises
to the Australian people.
Some would take it as given that the government
is elected to govern, but, to the
shame of some honourable senators past and
present, that has not always been the case. A
series of reforms never voted on by the Australian
people, from the introduction of preferential
voting in 1918, compulsory voting in
1924, proportional representation in 1948 to
the enlargement of the Senate in 1948, 1974
and 1984, has led to a situation whereby for
24 years the government of the day has been
denied a majority in this place. This is an
electoral system that would be completely
alien to the house of review planned by the
founding fathers, who instigated a system
likely to give the government of the day a
majority.
This anomaly has been used capriciously
over the last nine years to stop key election
policies endorsed by the people of Australia
from being implemented. In a shameful
chapter in this place’s history, the Senate has
acted as a block on the government’s ability
to deliver its promises to the Australian people.
Indeed, I believe one of the urgent tasks
this place faces is a reconsideration of the
deadlock provisions and how they interact
with the electoral provisions introduced since
Federation. For my part, I will be doing my
utmost to deliver to the Australian people the
promises that were made to them by this
government. They expect no less and they
deserve no less.
While liberalism is based on a foundation
of trust and individual liberty, the ideologies
of the Left—Labor and Greens—are based
on the premise that a select few know what is
best for ordinary people. This pattern of mistrust
by so-called modern Labor and its willing
ally, the Greens, is clearly evident in two
recent public policy decisions. The first was
the disgraceful attempt to deny Australians
tax cuts—a decision of breathtaking arrogance
and seeming contempt for Australia’s
working men and women. The other is socalled
modern Labor’s attempt to stall industrial
relations reform and its support of the
ACTU’s obscene scare campaign. It shows
again that Labor is prepared to sacrifice jobs
and real wage rises in favour of its primary
political donor. It is remarkable that in 2005
Labor does not trust ordinary Australians to
sit down and negotiate their terms of work
comfortable in the knowledge that they are
fully protected.
I have had the great privilege of serving
the Australian people in a variety of ways
throughout my career—as a city councillor
in my home town of Ballarat and as a member
of the House of Representatives representing
Ballarat, both in opposition and government.
I have had the privilege of serving
in several shadow ministries, as a member of
the Executive Council and as Chief Government
Whip. I now have the privilege of representing
the people of Victoria as a senator.
I intend to honour their trust by undertaking
to exercise my caution in the growth of state
power. Coupled with this is my determination
to use powers such as we have to improve
the lot of ordinary Australians by delivering
on this government’s mandate.
Just as I am cautious about expanding the
powers of this place, I am cautious about
expanding the powers of other wings of government.
For example, I remain firmly of the
opinion that the implied rights doctrine of the
High Court is a dangerous one. The implied
rights doctrine is an attack on the rule of law
and the sovereignty of parliament. It takes
the precious right to change our Constitution
away from the Australian people and delivers
it to an activist judiciary who never face
election. The judicial activism that has led to
the implied rights doctrine is also the nub of
the doctrine of legitimate expectation as set
out in Minister for Immigration and Ethnic
Affairs v Teoh—another case of the judicature
attempting to usurp legislative power.
Since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, a
key norm of international law has been state
sovereignty. Each state, including our own,
has the right to organise its own affairs. Treaties
are made by the executive by virtue of
the foreign affairs power but must then be
ratified and given effect by the legislature.
To give a treaty automatic force of law by
judicial fiat enables the executive to make
law, flying in the face of the doctrine of the
separation of powers. The obiter dicta in the
High Court decision in Re Minister for Immigration
and Multicultural Affairs; Ex parte
Lam is insufficient to lay this to rest. It is
time to ensure that Teoh is undone forever—
if necessary, by an act of parliament.
Unfortunately, the central values of liberal
democracy are also in danger from an external
threat. Jihadist fundamentalism is the
greatest challenge to the liberal democratic
way of life we face today. We are faced with
the ethical dilemma of a radical group who
want to kill us because of our free, liberal,
secular, egalitarian society, and they are using
these very freedoms we hold dear to attack
us. We must work to remove the voice
of those who foment terrorism. Where it is
possible, we must deport clerics who teach
that suicide bombing, in any country, is acceptable.
While this view is at odds with some media
commentators, I am reminded of the
words of Winston Churchill:
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping
it will eat him last.
It is interesting to note that, decades later,
another Prime Minister of England—a Labour
Prime Minister—is now firmly of the
view that appeasement is not an option, but
rather tough yet measured approaches are
required. We must use the full force of the
law against those who use positions of trust
and authority to incite hatred and violence.
Neither radical Muslim cleric Abdur Raheem
Green nor Sheikh Abdul Salam Zoud should
be allowed to enter this country to preach
their messages of hate. Just as our current
laws limit the right to speak where such
speech incites violence, so too must we limit
the ability of hate-speak to incite terrorism.
It goes without saying that when a regime
attempts to commit the genocide of Kurds,
when a regime commits repeated aggression
on its region and serves as a state supporter
of terrorism, such as the $25,000 payments
to the families of suicide bombers, it should
be reprimanded militarily. Of course, this
position assumes a moral judgment that
genocide, military aggression, terrorism and
suicide bombing are wrong. I am talking of
the Baath Socialist regime led by Saddam
Hussein. The sanction or otherwise of the
United Nations should be irrelevant in the
face of such evil.
The problem with the other side of this
place is that it is morally adrift. The philosophy
of today’s ‘broad left’ is founded on
postmodernist, deconstructionist, poststructuralist
and cultural-relativist philosophies.
To the extent that it has had an effect on the
ALP and the Greens in the Australian parliamentary
system, it has disengaged them
from the battle of ideas. The ability to deconstruct
any fact or truth requires the cultural
relativist to depart from the plain speaking
that Australians hold dear. When there is, as
the postmodernists hold, no objective truth,
then all statements are equal. You would
think that in this place political differences
could be put aside to say that genocide, military
aggression and terrorism are wrong. Unfortunately,
there are those in this place who
would seek to make excuses for the terrorists
who would destroy us—who, as poststruc
turalists, see no difference between those
who do wrong and those who seek to do
right.
Former Labor senator Sue Mackay said in
this place:
The war against Iraq is wrong and Australia
should be having no part of it.
Labor Senator Kate Lundy said:
... this war is about oil and domination more than
disarmament.
There is no humanitarian motivation in military
intervention into Iraq, only a concern for the bank
balances of the West.
On the UN vote condemning the security
fence that Israel so desperately needs to protect
itself from the global scourge of suicide
bombers, Kevin Rudd, federal Labor shadow
foreign affairs minister, said:
A more appropriate course of action would have
been for Australia to have abstained on this particular
resolution.
These Labor senators and members stand
condemned along with those who hold that
Australia, America, Spain and Britain are the
ones to blame for September 11 and the Bali,
Madrid and London bombings.
For those Labor and Greens members and
senators who have explicitly stated that we
should not have liberated the Iraqi people, let
us not forget Saddam Hussein’s legacy. As
recently pointed out by Tony Parkinson in
the Age, the atrocities uncovered in the aftermath
of the Kuwait occupation alone were
horrific. In 1991 the US military lawyers of
the Office of the Judge Advocate General
commenced a report into war crimes committed
‘at the direction or with the approval
of Saddam Hussein and officials of the Baath
Socialist Party’. The report details as follows:
The gruesome evidence confirms torture by amputation
of or injury to various body parts, to
include limbs, eyes, tongues, ears, noses, lips and
genitalia. Electric shock was applied to sensitive
parts of the body (nose, mouth, genitalia); electric
drills were used to penetrate the chest, legs or
arms of victims. Victims were beaten until bones
were broken, skulls were crushed and faces disfigured.
Some victims were killed in acid baths.
Women taken hostage were raped repeatedly.
Eyewitnesses described the murder of Kuwaitis
by Iraqi military personnel who forced family
members to watch. Eyewitnesses reported Iraqis
torturing a woman by making her eat her own
flesh as it was cut from her body.
It saddens me that some within the party of
Curtin now identify with those that fight
freedom. It is disturbing that the party of
Hawke, which, for all its faults, once stood
arm in arm with fellow democracies like the
United States and the United Kingdom, has
sunk to such lows that some of its parliamentary
representatives would have condemned
the people of Iraq to the continuation of Saddam
Hussein’s socialist regime.
Another example of the Left’s postmodern
moral muddle on terrorism was the ABC’s
coverage of the 7 July bombings in London.
While the rest of the world condemned those
vicious terrorist attacks, the ABC’s web site
referred to ‘a suspected militant attack.’ By
the next morning, they had even dropped
‘militant’ in favour of the non-judgmental
heading ‘The London bomb attack’. The
ABC’s style guide advises taxpayer funded
journalists:
Remember, one person’s ‘terrorist’ is usually
someone else’s ‘freedom fighter’. ‘Terrorism’,
‘terrorist’, ‘militant’, ‘gunman’, etc. are all labels.
Our reports should rely first on facts, and clear
descriptions of events, rather than labels that may
seem too extreme or too soft, depending on your
point of view.
We must not be afraid to call this what it is:
it is terrorism. We must not be afraid to describe
it in moral terms: evil. I stand here
today proud to be a government senator. The
fight against fundamentalist terror is likely to
be the greatest challenge of this century. It is a challenge for which Labor is not ready. It is
a challenge that we cannot shirk.
The scourge of postmodernism is not just
an obscure philosophy held by some in the
ALP and the Greens with respect to terrorists.
Postmodern literary theory has also infiltrated
our schools. Labor governments
across the country have removed traditional
literacy and numeracy programs, music and
sport from our children’s curriculum. They
have been replaced with deconstruction, socalled
fuzzy maths, whole language learning
and an institutionalised guilt in being members
of a liberal democracy. Indeed, former
Victorian Labor education minister and Premier
Joan Kirner has said of education that it
should be ‘part of the socialist struggle for
equality, participation and social change’.
Fractions and percentages matter for kids.
The ability to master mathematical operations
and calculations is critical for numeracy.
Mental arithmetic, times tables and
long division are not arcane; they are the
skills our kids need for life. Guesswork,
fuzzy maths and calculators are a cop-out.
Spelling, grammar, sentence structure, punctuation
and vocabulary are necessary for a
literate society—not so-called whole language
learning. Indeed, as young Australians,
our kids’ birthright should be to inherit
the great traditions of Australian and English
literature. The poems of Henry Lawson and
Banjo Paterson and the plays of Shakespeare
should mean something to our children. Even
the simple pleasure of playing a musical instrument
is denied to so many of our children.
Only 23 per cent of children at state
schools have access to music education. The
blame for this lies fairly and squarely at the
trendy ‘whole of arts’ education promulgated
by so many state Labor governments.
Our children deserve to learn the times tables,
be given spelling lists and learn grammar.
Children at all schools should have the
opportunity that physical education and music
teachers provide. Similarly, Australian
parents deserve to know when their kids are
failing and to be given appropriate assistance
to help if they are at risk of failing. I will
fight tooth and nail in this place to ensure
that our kids are not subjected to this pseudoeducation
of failed education fads under
successive Labor governments.
Unlike the cultural relativists of the Left,
we of the liberal and conservative traditions
are prepared to say that there is an objective
truth. There are not always two sides to
every argument. There are some normative
values which are both self-evident and necessary
for Australia to continue as we know
it: the rule of law; a good education for our
children; the separation of powers, both vertically
and horizontally; freedom of speech
and association; free exercise of religion;
trial by jury; secure borders; the maintenance
of national security. These are the cornerstones
of Australian liberal democracy and I
will fight any attempt to diminish these at
every turn. These are my non-negotiables.
Some 12 years ago, in another place, as
shadow minister for sport I proposed an hypothecated
lottery to fund sports in this country.
I am still a supporter of this concept but
believe that it could be broadened to benefit
many more ordinary Australians. I would
like to propose the ‘Triple A Lottery’, the
Advance All Australians Lottery—a dedicated
fund to invest in the priorities of people
and places across Australia that have
been forgotten. State governments across
Australia spend too much on professional
sports and not enough on putting physical
education teachers in schools. They invest
too much in opera companies and not enough
on music teachers in state schools. They
spend too much funding trendy artists with
no audience and not enough on programs to
help disabled kids find meaning in their life.
Good causes to benefit ordinary Australians which could be funded include programs in
education, sports, charities and community
organisations. I will be continuing my work
to make this a reality.
I am a proud member of the Victorian Division
of the Liberal Party and will be working
hard to ensure the division and those representing
it are treated such that merit is recognised
and that the division’s position
within the party is accorded its full dues. I
take this opportunity to thank the members
of my party and the Victorian people for their
trust and confidence. I would like to thank
my friend Helen Kroger for her tireless efforts
in rebuilding the jewel in the crown of
the Liberal Party—our Victorian division. I
would like to praise Peter Costello for his
outstanding leadership and thank Michael
Kroger for his friendship. From the bottom
of my heart I sincerely thank Cate for her
support and assistance to me. To our three
children, Joanna, Claire and Jack, thank you
for your untiring devotion and support. To
my staff, I thank you. To my friends from the
other place, thank you for your support over
many years. To the Treasurer, thank you for
your attendance today. It is an extraordinary
honour for me to be here. It has been a long
time coming—some 18 months. I thank honourable
senators for their courtesy.
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