Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Minister, before I ask my question I would like to take the opportunity at a personal level and an electoral level to say thank you. I am changing tack, given the following line of questioning, and talking about radicalisation and migrant youth in my electorate. I look at your path to politics and at when you started in 2007—coming on the back of the Cronulla riots—representing the seat of Cook, and entering parliament with the member for Blaxland, who I know is a close friend of yours as he is of mine. You did something that I thought was fantastic. It has been widely reported, I know, but it would be remiss of me not to mention it again. You and the member for Blaxland reached out to your local communities, realising that both communities needed to engage and learn more about each other, and started up your mateship trek to Kokoda, where the member for Blaxland, Jason Clare, would get young Muslim youth and you would get young Australian youth of Anglo decent and you would travel to Kokoda. You would not only bond as friends, but you would teach these kids that there is far more that unites us than divides us.

I look at my pathway to politics. I was elected in 2013 and not long after I was elected the issue of Daesh blew up on the world stage. It is no secret that I represent a Western Sydney seat with a large Muslim population. It is also no secret that I have parents in my electorate who are genuinely concerned for the safety and wellbeing of their children. I know the work you have done—I have seen it firsthand—with your and my good friend Jamal Rifi in the local community and with wonderful organisations like the Lebanese Muslim Association, chaired so ably by our good friend Samier Dandan and his amazing crew. I know that three weeks ago you and I were there to make an announcement giving the green light on some pilot projects that I, like you, believe will make a substantial difference in our local communities in Western Sydney. What you do not know, and what I would love to bring to your attention today, is that, not long after being elected, I ran into a character, a wonderful man, called Rabbi Zalman Kastel, and with him and Sheikh Charkawi—and it sounds like the start of a joke: 'A rabbi, a sheik, an imam and a politician walk into a school'—

A government member: And a priest!

We were missing the priest, Minister! But Zalman Kastel and Sheikh Charkawi have done a wonderful job of bringing students from Cronulla High School to South Granville high and the kids from South Granville high to Cronulla. There has been a pilot of an exchange program—a day when they all come together and do amazing things. Once again the common theme they learn—as you cottoned on to, not long after being elected—is that there is far more that unites us as Australians, irrespective of faith, than divides us.

The work you have done out in my local community, and continue to do, I thank you for, at a personal level. But I can tell you—and this is a direct message from the parents in Reid: they want us to stop their kids from being radicalised. They want us, if needs be, to grab them before they jump on a plane, so that we can give them the chance to learn that what they were heading off to is not only wrong but could ultimately prove to be the end of their life. These parents are very worried.

So, Minister, thank you very much, and what I would like to do—given that I know the topic so well, because I have had the benefit of sitting and watching you operate firsthand, and I know that many in this room do not have as multicultural a seat as I do, mine being the second-most multicultural seat in federal parliament—is to ask: would you explain to the House how the Abbott government is assisting vulnerable young migrants and refugees in communities like Reid to engage in work and helping them to make the right choices in their lives, for the sake of our local community, themselves and our country?

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