Lots of laughter and chat as the senators do this.

The disconnect between the senate chamber right now and what is happening in the world is enough to give you whiplash.

Labor doesn’t agree with the Coalition’s amendment censure motion, which includes invoking standing order 203, if she doesn’t apologise. That would allow the senate to suspend Faruqi from the chambe.

So Labor is saying no to that. But given the government and the opposition are in favour of the substance of censuring Faruqi, this motion will pass.

Mehreen Faruqi continues:

I do want to draw attention to the words of Martin Luther King in his Letter from Birmingham Jail. And it seems especially relevant while you all sit here and censure me for big for breaking what you call the decorum of Parliament, of my failure to be polite or respectful while a genocide unfolds, while kids are being killed.

He wrote of his frustration with the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice, who seeks only the absence of tension rather than the presence of justice, who says, I agree with the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your ways of achieving it. Who has a paternalistic belief they can set the timetable and decorum of another people’s freedom. Well, you can set your standards because you don’t want to see the truth. You don’t want to do anything about the genocide.

And one day, you know what? One day, you will all have to explain to your children and grandchildren where you stood when tens of thousands of men, women and children were being slaughtered. And I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes then, because you are all on the wrong side of history.

Instead of sanctioning me, maybe you should think about sanctioning Israel. They are the ones starving and slaughtering and displacing Palestinians, blowing up hospitals, obliterating schools, wiping out entire bloodlines.

But you ignore all of that. You ignore your constituents, you ignore your communities. You just can’t even read the room. You can’t engage with people in your own communities.

You have for 21 months, and much longer than that, crying out for you to do something, to take real action to stop this genocide, to stop the starvation, to sanction Israel. But I’m not really holding out my hope, honestly, but I can tell you this, the Greens will not be silent as this genocide unfolds. You will not be able to intimidate me or any of my colleagues, and we will never stop fighting for freedom, for Palestine and all those oppressed people.

She starts saying “from the river to the sea..” but her microphone is cut off with Sue Lines saying her speaking time is expired.

Mehreen Faruqi is now speaking.

Gaza is starving. Words won’t feed them. Sanction Israel. That is the truth on the sign that I held up in the Senate yesterday. And I will not back down from this call because Palestinians are being murdered, starved and displaced by Israel as we speak, and all you can do is crack down on people who protest, who tell the truth, who hold up a mirror to you all for your silence and complicity, labor and the coalition in this chamber wants to avoid the truth. You don’t want to see it or hear it, and now here we are. You want me. You want to force me to apologize for telling the truth. Well Well done. You can all pat yourselves on the back and move on.

Move on while Palestinians are slaughtered.

Faruqi continues:

MPs here and outside of here are accusing me of being disrespectful and denigrating the Parliament, and you should all reflect for a minute even on your silence and your complicity and even enabling of a genocide that is what degrades this place that is what reflects fully on this place, not a sign trying to wake you up from your moral stupor.

But you know what you are.

You are more focused on cracking down on black and brown women in this Parliament. You’ve done this before

There is OUTRAGE at this and Katy Gallagher asks for comment to be withdrawn.

I just think that Senator Faruqi should withdraw the allegation that senators are being racist in this chamber. That is the the obvious imputation from what she just said about all of us,

So a brown woman is being told to withdraw the comment that the senate has been more focused on cracking down on black and brown women in the parliament by a white woman. That’s what happened.

Faruqi doesn’t want to withdraw the comment and asks that the president review it, but withdraws so she can continue her speech.

A man wearing a keffiyeh started yelling from the public gallery and was taken out of the gallery by security after a request from senate president Sue Lines. The main senate chamber televised feed dropped out as it was happening.

So Labor is trying to pretend that because of the ceremony of the day, that it is completely sacrosanct compared to other days and therefore no protest can be held, because the sanctity of the parliament is injured.

That it is nothing to do with the issue Mehreen Faruqi was protesting – in this case GENOCIDE – but the fact that she protested on a day of ceremony.

To where you have to wonder what the point of the parliament is. If you can not peacefully protest a genocide in the parliament because that is such a wound to the parliament itself, then what is the point?

The issue does matter. History tells us that. This is not to advance a personal cause or ideology. It is an obligation to anyone who seeks to uphold international and humanitarian law. It is incumbent on all of us to do all we can to bring attention to the loss of life, war crimes and genocidal acts.

Gaza IS starving. Words WON’T feed them. There are actions we can take, including sanctioning Israel.

But instead, we are spending time discussing how the ceremony of a democratic nation was briefly interrupted.

This is the sort of thing history judges and goes WTAF were they doing.

Larissa Waters says it is a disgrace that the government and opposition is seeking to censure Mehreen Faruqi for a “peaceful protest” while ignoring what is happening in Gaza and refusing to actually act.

Waters:

What they shouldn’t be doing is disciplining anyone who dares to speak out, who dares to speak the truth, either in this place or anywhere, and the very idea that we’re discussing disciplining Senator Faruqi for holding up a piece of paper raising attention to the plight of those starving in Gaza, whilst completely ignoring the fact that One Nation senators turned their backs on the Welcome to Country only proves how out of touch with ordinary people this place is so I want to acknowledge everyone who is being honest about the genocide in Gaza, including the staunch and courageous Senator Faruqi, and I want to acknowledge everyone who’s calling on this government to do more.

And I want to salute the hearts of all those people who’ve been out the front of the building these last few days demanding action from our government. And I want to recognise the academics, the students, the journalists, the artists who have refused to remain silent despite the great person. personal cost that it has taken the Greens will not be silent.

Labor senator Katy Gallagher says it is “about the rules”

If I could just follow up on a couple of things that the leader of the Greens says, in particular her concern that this is about us trying to control or not allowing someone to who wants to dare to speak.

I mean, that is absolutely not what this is about. And I think Senator Faruqi has so many opportunities to speak, as every other senator does, to raise issues, but everyone else to the largest part possible does it in accordance with the standing orders and the rules of this place. And if we had to pretend that they don’t matter and they don’t exist anymore, nobody would ever have an opportunity to have a right to say anything in this place.

That is the rules that we all sign up for when we come into this place. Obviously Senator Faruqi feels that she is exempt from those rules.

But the rules allow all participate as senators in this chamber. That’s why they are important, and that’s why I think on the first day of the 48th parliament, the fact that the Opening of Parliament, where we had the Governor General, Her Excellency in the chair, the Chief Justice, and others in this chamber, to recognise, you know, that most important day in our democratic system, to represent the will of the Australian people through our formal processes, to have that used as an opportunity to be disorderly, I think disappointed everybody because of the importance of that day. Senator Faruqi has and will no doubt continue to make her points, as she’s able to do as a senator but in this case, but what happened yesterday was disorderly, and there has to be consequence for that, or there are no point to our standing orders at all.

Over in the senate, the government and opposition are joining together to chastise Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi after she held up a sign in the senate yesterday that said

“Gaza is starving. Words won’t feed them. Sanction Israel.”

After Anthony Albanese left the senate yesterday after his address, Faruqi called out:

“Prime minister, Gaza is starving, will you sanction Israel?”

Both Michaelia Cash and Penny Wong are policing Faruqi for the protest, and are seeking to ban her from any delegation for her time in the parliament, as well as apologise to the senate, the prime minister and the Governor-general.

Larissa Waters is now defending Faruqi.

Out of all the issues the Coalition could have used as its major issue in the first question time, focusing on rich people is very, very on brand.

Makes sense though, Sussan Ley met with Julie Bishop yesterday to talk higher education.

Leopards, spots – you know the rest

From Andrew Gee: “The rural doctor shortage crisis is devastating for Calare residents. Country people have shorter life expectancies than city people. It’s outrageous. The Charles Sturt University School of Rural Medicine opened five years ago to train doctors in the bush for practice in the bush, with 37 Commonwealth supported students. It hasn’t been given any more student places since. When will your government take effective action to a fix? The rural doctor shortage crisis?”

This is a very big issue and one we have looked at in the past. Last year Matt Grudnoff noted that “Research shows people living in rural areas have a much lower life expectancy”

He wrote that life expectancy falls even more for people who live in electorates outside the capital cities.

In electorates where the majority of people live in major regional cities life expectancy falls by more than a year (1.1) compared with outer metro electorates. In rural electorates the results are even worse. Almost half a year (0.4) lower than provincial electorates.

This means that those in inner metro electorates can expect to live on average 2.3 years longer than there fellow Australians in rural electorates.

But this is more than just about the distance from healthcare services. This is about rich and poor. In South Australia the relatively wealthy rural electorate of Mayo has an average life expectancy of 84.5 years, while the relatively poor outer metro electorate of Spence has a life expectancy 4 years lower than that at 80.5 years.

It is even worse for indigenous Australians. The Northern Territory electorate of Lingiari, which has the highest proportion of indigenous Australians, has the lowest average life expectancy at just 75.5 years.