Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the electorate of Murray, I want to participate in this debate on the motion moved by our Prime Minister, Mr Abbott, which expresses condolences for all of those who were affected directly by the siege in Martin Place, Sydney. The 16th of December 2014 will be deeply etched in the memories of particularly the families who lost Tori Johnson and Katrina Dawson but also the other families who are no doubt still suffering extreme anxiety and distress having been one of the 17 who were taken hostage and also of course the families of the police who were wounded in that siege.

I am particularly pleased to speak on behalf of Murray, because we are an extraordinary place. We have one of the most multicultural communities outside any capital city. In particular, we have a lot of Islamic communities and refugees. In this appalling situation in Martin Place, a man claiming to be a Muslim cleric—a madman, in fact; an evil person—who had a long criminal record and who had been granted political asylum in Australia literally committed the most heinous of violent offences, hoping no doubt to cause a real tension and reaction in the Australian public so there was hatred and vilification between different faith groups. I want to stress that, as a consequence of that terrible event, some of our young multicultural youth communities in the Goulburn Valley got themselves together and they said, 'We've got to make sure that we can demonstrate from our small rural and regional community in northern Victoria that, while we are Islamic, Christian, Sikhs, Buddhists and a whole range of people of faith and we are people who have no faith, we live in harmony and tolerance with one another.' In particular, our Al Kasem Youth Organisation organised what we called the Shepparton Twilight Vigil. It occurred just a few nights after this siege.

It was prompted of course by the terrible siege itself but it was also a response to the Facebook posting by Rachael Jacobs, who had noticed a Muslim woman taking off her headscarf when she was riding on public transport. Clearly worried and nervous about a reaction from the public, she had taken her headscarf off just hours after the siege. Ms Jacobs said to her, 'I'll be with you; I'll accompany you so that you are safe.' So our young Shepparton people said, 'Let's celebrate that tolerance and that loving friendship and at the same time let's pay our respects to the victims of that terrible siege in Sydney.'

And so, our twilight vigil took place, as I said, in partnership with the Al Kasem Youth Organisation, a group of Muslim youth; the Greater Shepparton City Council; and the Ethnic Council of Shepparton and District, which includes of course members and representatives from our African nations, the Middle East, our Islander communities and some of our older migrant communities from Europe. They were also joined by the youth group Word and Mouth and the Victoria Police.

The night was kind to us; we had an extraordinarily beautiful and peaceful evening. We joined around the big lake in the centre of Shepparton and each person took a candle. They walked around the lake shore in family groups, arm-in-arm perhaps with people who they had not met for a long time or some who they had not met before. Having walked right around the lake and having put our flowers in front of the special podiums that had been arranged, there were a number of speeches. Those speeches were from the Al Kasem Youth Organisation itself, from the Mayor of the Greater Shepparton City Council, from another councillor—himself from a Muslim background and originally from Albania. There were the most impassioned and significant speeches made. All of them talked about the incredible tolerance that we extend in our community, the loving care we have for one another and the fact that the most important thing is who we are in our community, not what we are, where we are from or when we happen to practice our faith—whether that is on a Saturday, a Sunday, a Friday night or no time at all.

I have to say that I was so proud, looking around the big crowd—there were hundreds of people there. Many of them were in traditional cultural dress. It is a fact in Shepparton that even though you are, perhaps, in the Turkish community and you came to Australia three generations ago, you will still wear your traditional dress, because no-one insists on or expects you to wear anything different. So we had people in Sikh traditional cultural dress, we had people in the dress of the Hazara from Pakistan and Afghanistan and people from Iraq, Jordan and Iran, and we had our Islanders. And, of course, the whole evening began with a wonderful local Indigenous man playing the didgeridoo.

It was an extraordinary evening—a very moving evening. One of the very special things about that evening was that what we were trying to say was than an act by an evil madman like this person in Sydney, who took it upon himself to kill and who no doubt wanted to make a big name for himself as a martyr, had no impact on a community like ours and, in fact, on the broader Australian society. In fact, what he did was to bring us closer together. It gave us an opportunity to demonstrate that we may have come from all over the globe—so many people like him have been granted political asylum in small communities like Shepparton and Mooroopna and the Goulburn Valley—but we do not take that peace and security for granted. We are going to work at it. It was so special.

The Al Kasem Youth Organisation were the key organisers—the first to begin this idea—and they led the ceremony we had around the foreshore of our lake. Ali Al Bayati—one of the key Al Kasem Youth Organisation members—stressed that the event was for all people, of all different beliefs and cultures, and that he hoped that the community would come together:

We can demonstrate to people in Australia and all over the world that we can stand together and be there for each other.

That was done very symbolically and very beautifully through this twilight vigil.

Just a couple of nights ago, before parliament started sitting, at about nine o'clock on a Friday in Shepparton—just on dusk—I saw something remarkable. I saw a middle-aged woman in her traditional Middle Eastern dress. I would say she was probably from Iraq. She had very conservative, dark, full-length clothing on. She was walking up the street, which was pretty much deserted on this Friday evening. The thing that was so remarkable to me was that she was in her full traditional dress, walking along proudly, but she was also alone. She was totally alone and obviously she felt totally secure and in no way threatened. She was simply going about her business just on dusk, walking up the main street of Shepparton. And I thought, 'Well, this is our country.' She did not have to worry about taking off her scarf or her long, full-length clothing; she did not have to worry about having a different colour. She was perfectly secure and safe in our community, and may it always be like that.

Again, on behalf of my electorate of Murray and on behalf of all my communities—the three mosques in Shepparton, the mosque in Cobram, the Sikh temple in Shepparton, the various Christian churches that we have and our Islander community special churches—I say, 'We are all one'. And we also acknowledge those who do not go to a church at all—we are all one. The key thing is that we care for one another, we are tolerant and we look to what individuals can contribute to our great nation. We look to how they care for their families, how they obey the rule of law in our country and how they set about to make sure that no-one is persecuted simply because they have come from a different place or because they espouse a different religion to our own.

I think this is a very important motion and I am very proud and pleased to commend it, and also to commend my great community in northern Victoria.

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