Mark Latham unleashes in maiden speech: How did our nation come to this?

Latham unleashes: backing Israel Folau, thanking Alan Jones and blasting “cultural Marxism”.

NSW One Nation leader Mark Latham’s maiden speech to NSW parliament backed Israel Folau (inset, top) and thanked Alan Jones (inset bottom)

New One Nation NSW MP Mark Latham has railed against the Left and political correctness in his maiden speech in the NSW parliament, accusing people of trying to bring down western civilisation through a campaign of “cultural Marxism”.

Mr Latham defended rugby player Israel Folau and said that he would be “moving legislation for the protection of free speech, religious freedom and the privacy rights of workers” in his time in parliament.

He also said he would move legislation allowing nuclear power into NSW and said the federal Opposition spokesman on the environment, Mark Butler, would become the “minister for blackouts” with his pro-renewables approach and compared the push for renewables to a “pagan religion”.

Mr Latham, who with a One Nation colleague and several other crossbenchers will hold the balance of power in the upper house in NSW, said he and others were in the “fight of our lives” to bring back the values of Western civilisation.

“Mr President, I stand with Israel Folau. In his own private time away from his job playing football, he’s a preacher at his community church and naturally, he quotes the Bible,” Mr Latham said.

“I was on Folau’s list of sinners”

“He believes, as millions of people have believed for thousands of years, that sinners go to Hell.

“As per his valid religious faith, he loves the sinner but condemns the sin. Yet for his beliefs, his Christianity, he is not allowed to play rugby, to chase the pigskin around the park.

“How did our State and our nation ever come to this? I was on Folau’s list of sinners, more than once actually.

“But as I don’t believe in Hell, there was no way I could take offence. Those claiming outrage have fabricated their position solely for the purpose of censorship. This is not an argument about diversity.

“The Wallabies have no female players, no disabled, no elderly, no middle aged.

“They are selected from a tiny fraction of the young, fit, athletic male population.

“By excluding a committed Christian, they are making their game less inclusive. And as for Folau being a role model for young gay men, one only needs to state this proposition to understand its absurdity.

“Footballers are not role models for anyone, other than in enjoying their sporting ability.

“I say to any young person: if you are looking for guidance and inspiration in life, study Churchill, Lincoln, Reagan and Roosevelt, not Todd Carney. By the way, that’s Ronald Reagan, not Reg Reagan.

“The new serfdom”

“No Australian should be fearful of proclaiming four of the most glorious words of our civilisation: I Am A Christian.

“No one should be sacked by their employer for statements of genuine belief and faith that have got nothing to do with their job.

“The Folau case exposes the new serfdom in the Australian workplace: how big companies, the corporate PC-elites are wanting to control all aspects of their employees’ lives — their religious and political views, how they speak and think, how they behave, even in their own time away from the workplace.

“This is a stunning intrusion on workers’ rights. Yet far from condemning the new serfdom, Labor and the trade unions have been cheering it on.

“As per our One Nation election commitments, I will be moving legislation for the protection of free speech, religious freedom and the privacy rights of workers.”

Mr Latham also went on to rail against the Left generally.

“For all its pitfalls and failings, the Legislative Council has always redeemed itself in wanting to extend the reach of Western civilisation and advancement in Australia. Until now,” Mr Latham said.

‘A scene from the Life of Brian’

“Like so many parts of our politics that have changed quickly in recent times, there are voices here who do not believe in the virtues of the West, who do not acknowledge the nation-building achievements of our culture and our country.

“It’s like a scene from The Life of Brian, a case of: What has Western civilisation done for us? Only advanced healthcare and education; architecture, engineering, information technology, free speech and the rule of law.

“ In fact: this chamber, this parliament, in this city, all our public institutions and the material comforts we take for granted — none of them could exist without the greatness of the West. Without the advances that began with the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution and continue to this day.

“Yet still, among the Leftist elites, among the social engineers and cultural dietitians, sneering at our civilisation and its achievements has become their new pastime.

“They preach diversity but practice a suffocating cultural conformity, wanting everyone to be just like them.

“They argue for inclusion but as soon as a Christian, a conservative, a libertarian, a nationalist, a working class larrikin, an outsider from the vast suburbs and regions of our nation disagrees with them, they crank up their PC “outrage machine to exclude them from society. “

They are tolerant of everything except dissenting values and opinions — meaning, of course, they are tolerant of nothing that matters, only themselves.”

Mr Latham said this was a “Leftist curse through the ages: the recurring history of those who so badly crave control over others, they lose control over themselves.”

“Safe Schools garbage”

He said those from the Left were taking away from “battlers” “the right to speak their mind. To say they love their country and want Australia Day to stay”.

“To practice their Christianity, openly and freely. To send their children to school without the garbage of Safe Schools, Wear-It-Purple days, ‘HeadRest’ indoctrination and the other crackpot theories making some NSW classrooms more like a Hare Krishna meeting than actual education.

“And when they go to work, the chance to do their job without being bombarded by employment quotas, ‘unconscious bias’ training and a long list of unspeakable, taboo words — scary, scary stuff, like ‘guys’ and ‘mums and dads’.” “The New Left are the new primitives of our time: junking the importance of evidence, of recorded history, of biological science, to pretend that all parts of our lives (especially race, gender and sexuality) can be fluid, that everything we know and feel around us is, in fact, ‘socially constructed’.”

Mr Latham said society “shouldn’t be confusing young people and risking their mental health by pushing gender fluidity upon them”.

“ … In the last national census, for instance, 13 hundred Australians identified as transgender. But to listen to the political and media coverage of this issue, you would think there were 13 million.

“ Mr President, Everywhere I travel, parents and grandparents, workers and communities, tell me how concerned they are about Australia’s direction. They ask me, ‘What’s happened to our country; where has this nonsense come from?’ The answer is clear. The Leftist project, then and now, is about control. “Having, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, lost the struggle for economic control, the Left got smarter. It shifted from the Cold War to a culture war. It moved from pursuing economic Marxism to pushing cultural Marxism.

“Instead of seeking revolution at the top of government, it has marched instead through our institutions — a tactic that’s harder to combat. The elites have been remarkably successful in this cultural invasion.

“Our abiding national traditions of free speech, merit selection, resilience and love of country are being lost, not just in the public sector — in schools, universities, public broadcasters, major political parties and government agencies — but also in large parts of corporate Australia and the commercial media. The rest of us are the Resistance to this national takeover.

“If you control someone’s language, you control a big part of their lives: how they interact with others, how they communicate in society, their feeling of belonging.”

“As the great John Cleese has pointed out, telling a joke about someone doesn’t mean we hate them.”

Mr Latham went on to defend former Labor leader Luke Foley’s description of “white flight” from western Sydney but criticised his successor Michael Daley’s comments about “Asians with PhDs” coming in to take jobs.

And he said there was too much immigration.

“Big Australia immigration has flooded the labour market, holding down wages. “It has also flooded the housing market, driving up demand and prices.

“It’s fuelling Sydney’s congestion and overdevelopment crisis. This city cannot continue to grow at 100,000 per annum, at a severe cost to the environment and residential lifestyle.

“For a government struggling to build a couple of tram tracks down the main street, the promise of better planning is a hoax.

He said Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s government was championing an “aerotropolis” near the new Western Sydney Airport.

“The government talks about it like it’s a cross between Silicon Valley and Disneyland.

“But it’s looming as just another excuse for urban sprawl and under-servicing.

“The government says it’s building a new city the size of Adelaide, with 1.3 million people. Yet remarkably, there are no plans for a new public hospital, only a so-called ‘integrated health facility’ servicing less than 20 per cent of the proposed population.

“Mr President, The fightback for freedom is long overdue. As is the fightback for fairness.

“The repair job in education is massive: hours of discussion, hundreds of questions to be asked and answered, scores of policy ideas and reform proposals to be advanced. And that’s what I’ll be doing throughout this term of parliament — my word I will. Mr President, I’m concerned for the future prosperity of our State.”

Priorities: education, energy

He said education and energy policy were his two priorities.

“I’m not a climate denier. I respect all forms of science. But just as much, I don’t believe in running public policy through the work of zealots.

“And that’s what renewables have become — a new pagan religion, whereby the Green-Left wants to hand over human control of our energy grid to the vagaries of the weather, through wind and sun worship.

“We are being asked to change the climate by relying on the weather — a high-risk, paradoxical way of planning for the needs of a modern economy. There is a place for renewables in the system. But it must be supplementary to baseload power, not the other way around.

“Currently the Federal Labor Shadow Minister for Energy, Mark Butler, is promising the Australian people a new era of “dispatchable renewable energy”. “Yet when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining, there is nothing to dispatch. Butler will end up being the Minister for Blackouts.

“In longer term planning for the State, lifting the ban on uranium mining and nuclear power, as per the Deputy Premier’s policy. I can advise the House that yesterday I gave notice of a Private Member’s Bill for this purpose.”

Mr Latham said that since retiring from federal parliament having served as federal opposition leader in 2005: “The days and years with my children have been the best of my life but now they are so much older and, through them, having seen what the government school system has become, it was time to come here to do something about it.”

He thanked 2GB broadcaster Alan Jones for his support, saying he “at various times gave me a chance when no one else would”.

“ For those of us who believe in the virtues of Western civilisation, who treasure the advances and values of the Enlightenment … this is the fight of our lives. Our ethos, sir, is simple: No surrender. No surrender in any debate, in any institution, on any front. No surrender in trying to take back our country, That, Mr President, is why I’m here and what I’m fighting for.”