Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise to second the motion of the member for Stirling:

That this House reaffirms that :

(1)

every Australian is entitled to the full protection of Australian law;

(2)

cultural practices in any community do not lessen that protection; and

(3)

human rights override cultural rights.

Being a liberal democracy, Australia is founded on one fundamental keystone. That keystone is that all Australians are equal before the law, irrespective. And that message is one that has been at the centre of Australian democracy for well over 100 years.

Of concern to both me as the member for Moncrieff and the member for Stirling has been recent practice, although not reflected on statute books and although perhaps not incorporated into Commonwealth precedent—though increasingly that would appear to be the case—whereby cultural diversity is increasingly used as a mitigating factor with respect to criminal activity. Despite comments by the member for Kingsford Smith that, in some instances, cultural relativity is a factor that imposes a harsher penalty, we as a parliament are not in the business of creating laws that are based upon some kind of quantification of whether or not cultural relativity makes an offender more or less likely to be punished in a particular way. All parliaments in this country must hold true one central tenet: that all Australians are equal before the law, irrespective—full stop.

Cultural relativities do not hold a place in modern Australia. It is simply unacceptable that Aboriginal Australians have been subject to the most heinous sexual abuse and crimes for which perpetrators are sentenced to four months. It is unacceptable that there have been Australian women subjected to criminal activity because in some way it is implied that cultural factors are an influencing factor in whether or not they are subject to particular abuse or, for example, rape. It is unacceptable, and we all, as Australians, must draw a line in the sand and say value diversity does not have a home in Australia.

A key part of Australia’s background has been this unification of all people irrespective of cultural background, where there is not value diversity. Problems arise, however, when value diversity is thrust forward as some kind of enlightened diversification between cultures and as something that must be embraced and incorporated into modern Australian society if we are truly going to be a kind of showcase to the world of how multiculturalism works. Multiculturalism is certainly not predicated upon value diversity. Alain Finkielkraut in his work, The Undoing of Thought, said:

Is there a culture where there is corporal punishment for delinquency ... where female circumcision is practised, where mixed marriages are forbidden and polygamy authorised? Multiculturalism requires that we respect all these practices ... In a world which has lost its transcendental significance, cultural identity serves to sanction those barbarous traditions which God is no longer in a position to endorse. Fanaticism is indefensible when it appeals to heaven, but beyond reproach when it is grounded in antiquity and cultural distinctiveness.

I do not agree with the thrust of all of his remarks, but I certainly agree with the central tenet that antiquity and cultural distinctiveness are not grounds for saying that we are a more enlightened society. It is not a ground for saying to the Australian people that we will accept past practices, be they Indigenous Australian past practices or religious past practices such as female genital mutilation, for example. All of these are in breach of fundamental human rights—human rights which, in a liberal democracy, ensure that the individual and not the state is the supreme being when it comes to society. What we witness in Australia is an erosion where individuals in certain communities—and the member for Kingsford Smith touched on this with respect to Wadeye—feel the loss of that protection of the rule of law and the consequence is an erosion of society itself. It is unacceptable, and I commend this motion to the House. (Time expired)

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