Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I obviously express condolences to the families of Tori and Katrina, and also for the other people that were under grave threat to their lives during that period. I want to especially associate myself with the comments of the member for Murray in this debate, which went to the need for tolerance and understanding in this country in the aftermath of this horrific event.

You, Mr Deputy Speaker Kelly, would well and truly know that once in a blue moon I would agree with Liberal Councillors Hadid, Mannoun and Hadchiti on Liverpool Council. However, I absolutely associate myself with the comments they have made demanding an apology from Councillor Marcus Cornish of Penrith council in the last few days.

If I could briefly return to our friend Mr Man Haron Monis before I get to this point: this is a person who, allegedly, fled Iran after a fraud; a travel agent who fabricated his religious credentials; a man who had faced charges in regard to murder, intimidation and aggravated sexual assault; and who had sent hate mail to people whose families had been victims overseas.

He was, of course, repudiated totally by a significant number of Islamic centres in Sydney, who did not take up is offer to preach at their respective mosques, an example of that being the Nabi Akram Islamic Centre, a Shia site in Cowper Street Granville, where my friend Hamid Nassib was amongst people who rejected him as not being the kind of person that they want to have giving lectures on religious beliefs. He was quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald amongst many others who said this person, back before he committed these horrendous actions, had nothing to do with Islam.

I want to turn to the question of Penrith council and the debate about a mosque in the council area. Because if we are to learn from this, essentially it is crucial to undermine real terrorism—and Mr Monis was not a terrorist; he was just an absolute criminal of the worst order as his track record showed—we must seek to incorporate Islamic Australians. What we are seeing on Penrith council is a small group within the Liberal Party—and I stress that—described as the 'Taliban faction', who, fortunately, were outvoted nine to two on the council about having a mosque there.

I particularly want to commend the Liberal mayor of the Penrith area, a moderate person who joined with the absolute majority of Liberals, Greens, Independents and Labor to reject Mr Cornish's concepts. But Mr Cornish showed exactly how we are not going to dissuade people from joining extremist groups. Obviously there are social or economic factors such as unemployment and marginalisation but we must seek to incorporate Australian Muslims into broader society. What we had out there was an outburst of extreme Islamaphobia. He has gone on the record saying this mosque must be built in Liverpool because Liverpool is identified with criminality and there are more Muslims out there. Yes, the proportion of Muslims in the Liverpool council area, which I share with yourself, Mr Deputy Speaker Kelly, is 10.1 per cent and the percentage in Penrith is only 1.9 per cent. However, the actual religious centre is Shia, a distinct minority among Sydney's Muslims. I do not have separate figures as to their concentration beyond Arncliffe.

What are we saying? Are we saying that we will decry Muslims and other ethnic groups concentrating in particular suburbs of Sydney and basically forming so-called ghettos but we will not allow religious centres in other areas, which would essentially attract them to those centres? It would disperse the population more. The more mosques and religious centres we have, the more schools we have actually is a force for basically widening the diversity of settlement. But the same people who say, 'Oh well, it is all about Sharia law; it is about the question of terrorism et cetera', go and basically create problems for us in this marginalisation, this stigmatisation, these attacks.

Marcus Cornish is an expert in this. I do not know where we got these statistics from but Councillor Marcus Cornish has alleged someone told him that most of the people moving into the Kemps Creek area come from Auburn and Liverpool. We have a bureau of statistics in this country. We have got a Census but this person must have expertise beyond all of these institutions and all of these methods of collecting statistics because he apparently knows that.

Monis sought to associate himself with ISIL. As we know, he had to get the flag from somewhere else. He had no contacts whatsoever. ISIL and groups like them utilised him afterwards to in some ways praise his actions. But it is very important that we do not see this as the work of extremist terrorist organisations. It is very much a personalised criminality that he has undertaken.

I remember Australia's Islamic community in Western Sydney before September 11. It was a community which had basically integrated into the wider society in a very real sense. I think most members of this House would know, with the possible exception of the member for Berowra, there is nobody else who has associated with this community as much as I. After many years of contact with the Islamic community, I did not know that it was a problem to shake hands. Because in a lot of the houses I went into, women never raised the issue with me. That was the way it was.

What we had after September 11 was a drift towards fervency. In some sense, there will be a lot of people in this House who believe in religious fervency. We had the community under assault, under investigation, under the spotlight and people had to make a choice. They could either stick out and be loyal with people or they had to retreat and get out of the community. It is crucial that we do not have conduct such as we are witnessing at Penrith council, admittedly by only two of the councillors, that basically says to people again, 'You are on the fringe, you are outside, you should not have a religious centre, you are associated with criminality and you are associated with what is bad in our society.'

As I said, I want to praise the entire Liverpool council, which basically said to Mr Cornish an apology is overdue. This kind of stigmatisation is not to be tolerated. Once again, I join with members in the basic tenor of this debate in saying that this was a reprehensible action that we witnessed. I am feeling very deeply for all of those involved. We saw its manifestation in the flowers and other aspects in Sydney. It really was representative of the society that we want.

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