One Nation leader Pauline Hanson tried to introduce a motion to the Australian Senate yesterday (11 June) to recognise that 'all lives matter'.
The Queensland politician's motion follows a global resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, in the wake of the George Floyd's death while in police custody in Minneapolis.
Hanson told the Senate that people were 'too bloody gutless to stand up for the people of this nation [and say] that all lives matter'.
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However, the Senate was unmoved, as nearly every single senator voted against the motion.
There were two 'ayes', one from the One Nation leader and another from One Nation politician Malcolm Roberts. A total of 51 senators opposed the motion, while Senator Jim Molan opposed voting on it.
A spokesperson for Mr Molan told The Guardian said he wasn't voting because 'it was a simplistic motion not amenable to a simple vote and should be subject to a debate where all senators can voice their views'.
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Labor's Senate leader Penny Wong thought the motion 'wasn't appropriate' because it was only trying to 'incite division'.
"Asserting black lives matter isn't saying that other lives do not matter," Wong told the Senate.
"It is responding to a systemic structural problem where black lives are not given equal value. And those who want to reinforce that status quo, including white supremacists, have instead adopted the phrase that is used in Senator Hanson's motion."
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The 'All Lives Matter' phrase has re-emerged in opposition to the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement around the world and in Australia.
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