Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment) Share this | Hansard source

It is a deep an onerous task for each of us who is speaking on the Martin Place siege. It was an example of a terrible incident on Australian soil with dramatic human consequences. It was also, at the same time, an example of the finest courage from those hostages who ultimately gave their lives to protect and save others, of courage from the police and of an extraordinary upwelling of community unity in the hours and days which followed this act of barbarity. Let me make a few observations, firstly, in relation to those who were lost; secondly, in relation to the events that followed the siege; and thirdly, in relation to the steps forward.

Australia lost two fine young Australians. Katrina Dawson was a very successful Sydney barrister, a mother of three young children whose life was lost in the siege while protecting another. She showed incredible courage which ultimately may have cost her her life. That is as great a gift as anybody can ever give. Tori Johnson, the manager of the café, was also involved in acts of great heroism. For his family, that is an extraordinary loss. To see a young man cut down is a terrible tragedy. But there is a level of grandeur in the heroism to which people can rise in the most extreme times, which was exemplified by the way in which both Katrina and Tori conducted themselves. They gave of themselves in a way which is beyond imagination and almost beyond words in commendation.

There were three other hostages out of the total of 18 who were taken, which comprised eight staff and 10 customers, that were injured: Marcia Mikhael, who was shot in the leg; 75-year-old Robyn Hope, who was shot in the shoulder; and 52-year-old Louisa Hope, the daughter of Robyn, who was shot in the foot. For each of them, I give them our hope for a rapid recovery as free of emotional trauma as is possible under the circumstances. I know that the New South Wales government is providing all possible support, but, most importantly, their friends and families have rallied in the best possible way.

Following the siege and the barbaric approach from Man Haron Monis, who was the hostage taker, Australians should be proud of their police, proud of their authorities and perhaps most proud of the response of the Sydney community and of the broader Australian community.

In terms of the Sydney community, the upwelling of spontaneous support that turned Martin Place into a centre of memory, a centre of community and a centre of gathering to acknowledge those who were lost, and to have done it in such a gentle and caring way, speaks volumes about the true Australian character. This was Australia at its most compassionate, most generous and most spontaneous. There was no organisation, there was no government edict; it was the community responding as one immediately in the best example of a response to the worst of events.

Similarly, I am one who believes the #illridewithyou response to ensure that the Islamic community was not targeted was a deeply positive thing. It represented, in my view, in my judgement, a breadth and depth of Australian character of which we should be proud. Having said that, I am even more pleased that there was no backlash in any significant, meaningful way whatsoever. It was a defence against a possible action, but I am pleased to say there was, thankfully, no underlying response in Australia, that the nature of Australians was to recognise that this was the act of a deluded and deranged gunman who was responding to a global call for jihad. So those were the events that followed.

But let me put this in the long-term context now. We are, as I said in this House in 2003, in 2004, in 2005, engaged in a generation long struggle against a jihadist, nihilist, violent, extremist sliver. This jihadist, nihilist, violent, extremist sliver seeks to establish a caliphate. It seeks to destroy those of the Islamic faith who do not adhere to their exceptionalism as well as those of all other faiths. It is of course worth noting that the primary target of Daesh, or ISIS, has been those of the Islamic faith who do not abide by a totalitarian abusive rule that is utterly contemptuous of women, that is utterly contemptuous of human rights, that delights in bloodshed, that delights in a mediaeval violence and torture that is simply extraordinary and inhuman and inhumane.

Their goal, along with al-Qaeda, is to seek to establish a foothold in Pakistan, in Egypt, in Saudi Arabia, in Indonesia to create the basis for a caliphate. We must work with those countries and resist at all opportunities. Their broader goal is to extend this caliphate into all countries. They will fail, but we must not ever resile from the fact that this will be a difficult challenge for using both soft power and hard power. Soft power is the power of ideas and resilience and an absolute commitment that we will not tolerate the acts of violence and intimidation that we see. The hard power is to say that where there are deep threats to our citizens or to citizens abroad we cannot be passive. I am one who believes we do need to take steps. We have seen in the last 48 hours actions to prevent another possible tragedy. I commend the security agencies and the police for their work on that front. At the end of the day, we are engaged in a generation long battle—as I, along with many others, identified in this place a decade ago. That battle has not gone away. The call by Daesh, or ISIS, for lone wolf gunmen or other forms of activity has been heard around the world. Some have tried to take it on. In France we saw the atrocity associated with the Charlie Hebdo magazine. We will resist these acts of extremism wherever they are. We will not tolerate a philosophy that is about human destruction, the glorification of violence, the attempt to destroy the freedom of our society and the attempt to simply take over entire tracts of country, whether it is in Syria or Iraq. At the end of the day, we remember Katrina Dawson and Tori Johnson. We acknowledge their extraordinary heroism and courage and we give whatever comfort we can at this distance to their families.

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