Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

Of the raids that were held last week, a number of those homes were actually in my electorate, so I felt the need to make a contribution to the security statement today. We know that what terrorists want is for us to fear each other, to attack each other and to lessen our freedoms, because all of these things increase their recruiting power within our community. These are the things that we must resist: the temptation to let fear get out of control, to blame the innocent for the actions of a very small number and to lessen our freedoms beyond the things that we need to do to keep ourselves safe. I know my community very well. I have been representing it now for very close to 10 years, and I do not feel afraid of it. I do not feel afraid to be in it or to go to the many events that I do, and the events of the last two weeks do not change that in any way. In fact, I see my community and all its diversity as one of the great hopes of this nation. We speak every language. We understand every culture in the world. We know every religion. There is not a city in the world that we cannot navigate without a map. It is in every way, as the world gets smaller, our strength. Our diversity is our strength when we deal with the threat of terrorism within our community.

If there are people in our community who wish us harm, for every one of them there are literally thousands of us: people of all religions and cultural backgrounds, people doing the best they can, people who greatly appreciate living in this wonderful free country, people who obviously and naturally reject terrorism. And the thousands of us have every opportunity to pull together, stronger than ever.

It is not the first time that things have gone wrong in our community around Parramatta. The shootings by the bikie gangs that you read about in the newspapers were pretty much my community as well. There have been times in recent years when a very small number of people have caused havoc on our streets, in and around Parramatta, and now it appears that increased efforts by ISIL to recruit may have borne fruit. But that possibility provides us with an opportunity to focus on us as a community, not to fight the few—law enforcement will do that more than the broader community—but to support the many, to come together to make sure that we are stronger as a community because of these events, not weaker. Our community will be defined in future by how we manage our fears and hopes in the coming days, weeks and months and the extent to which we reach out to each other in support.

In many ways the people who most need our support at the moment are the Muslim community. Last year at about this time a group came to me to tell me that members of the Islamic community, even then, were afraid to go out in the street. The women in particular, because they quite often wear the scarf—and there are many Muslims in my community who do not but many who do—were being spat on, abused or jostled, having their clothing pulled, sometimes having their scarves ripped from their heads and knocked to the street, even if they were out with their small children or pushing a pram. There were a growing number of women who were actually afraid to go out because of the level of religious bigotry that they were experiencing. I am told now that it is worse than ever. That is not acceptable. Every member of our community needs to stand up against this. Every member of our community needs to stand up against the treatment of people within our community in this way.

If there are people in our communities who wish to do us harm, the problem is perhaps better understood by a community as diverse as mine. If there are cracks in our community that let in views and beliefs that lead to violence and intimidation, they will be more easily identified by our Islamic community than by even the law enforcement agencies. Our answers and solutions as a community will be stronger if we trust in each other and accept the contributions that each of us makes to building our lives.

One of the strengths of diversity at times like this is the range of experiences and views that we hold. There are people in my community who know Iraq and Syria because they lived there. There are those who were persecuted there and fled for that reason. For some, their family still live in Syria or Iraq, and others with dual citizenship may have homes there as well as in Australia. There are many others who know the history of the Middle East. They know the history of intervention by the West, the various conflicts that have taken place over recent decades and the perceptions that are held by those communities because of the history that they have lived. There are others who have been persecuted in their first country and who hold deeply held views about the characteristics of another ethnic or religious group. There are people of all religions with varying levels of understanding about all the other religions that surround us, and there are others who have great understanding because they have taken the time, through interfaith dialogue, to learn it.

So, when something like the events of the last couple of weeks takes place, the views in my community are broad and diverse and all valuable. All are valuable. One of the negatives at a time like this—and I found it when I was phoning various religious leaders last week—was the number of them who said that they did not feel that now was the time to speak. They felt that, if they spoke about their beliefs on the sending of troops to Iraq, the government's response, the opposition's response or the policy response in Australia and they were critical of it, they might be tagged with the 'friend of terrorists' tag. They felt uneasy about speaking out. That is a great shame because we have never in this country been afraid of differences of opinion, and we have never been afraid of criticism of government. As long as that criticism comes from where I know it does come—which is a wish for us to do the best we can for our community—we should be welcoming of the full range of views.

In fact, I believe that our policy responses in the long term will be stronger if we can listen to and take account of the range of views with trust rather than suspicion. Again, I know my community well enough to know that in their hearts they wish the best for this country—which is theirs and in which they live—and the views that they express are given in good faith because they believe that they can make a contribution to the policy debate. I look forward to a time when people in my community, those of Muslim faith in particular, can speak openly about their concerns about the way the government and opposition might be pursuing policy solutions, without fear that it will somehow reflect on their loyalty to this country. I do not question their loyalty. I look forward to a time when that is the case. I would also urge them, as the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Foreign Fighters) Bill 2014 was introduced yesterday, that if they have strong views they are always welcome in my office to discuss them—always. It is time for us all to use the strength and the diversity we have to find the best answers that we possibly can.

About two years ago, I think, I went to a function at one of my local arts centres with an Arabic hip-hop artist from Iraq. He is called The Narcissist; that is his name. He is supposedly one of the most influential Arabic speakers in the world but he does hip-hop and it is really quite clever. He had introduced me to a hip-hop work at that time which was actually called The Terrorist. It was by a Palestinian artist, so it said the kinds of things that you would expect within that frame—a very, very good piece of hip-hop, whether you agree with its sentiments or not.

It was such a good piece of work and I wanted to share it with some friends of mine, so I said to a young Muslim friend of mine, 'There's this really great piece of hip-hop called The Terrorist; just google it.' He said: 'I can't google "the terrorist"; I'm a young Islamic man. I'll have people following me around the street.' So, even two years ago, this young man—who is as far from being a terrorist as I am from being a white extremist, quite frankly; no-one who knew this man could ever assume anything of him but good—was afraid that, if he actually googled certain words, he would fall under the umbrella of 'a person of suspicion'. That is a terrible condition to live under.

I would ask us all as a community to just consider the pressures we put on some of our communities when we start to lose our trust in their loyalty to this nation. I congratulate those—as Minister Morrison did yesterday in the parliament—who held barbecues and public gatherings in the last few weeks to bring people together and speak openly about a commitment to Australia. There were some very good gatherings, particularly in Lakemba recently, where the Muslim community came together to do just that. I thank them for doing that, in the same way that I look forward to a time when people of Islamic faith can speak their views openly without fear of assumptions or suspicion.

I look forward to a time when the Islamic community does not feel it necessary to come together to demonstrate their Australianness. They do not have to do that for me. We have had Muslims living in this country for decades. We had our first mosque in 1883. We had two in Broken Hill by 1886. I have fifth-generation Muslims in Parramatta and Turks who have been living there for 40 years. They are a fine part of our community and I wish them all the support they need at this time. (Time expired)

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