Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this motion regarding the national security statement, especially in light of the incident that we had in Minto in south-west Sydney, not far from my electorate, only yesterday. And I acknowledge the new member for Macarthur here in the chamber with us. I understand that Minto actually is in your electorate, Sir. Minto is a suburb that I am quite well acquainted with. My parents shop there regularly. It is an area in south-west Sydney that I have travelled through often. And to have a terrorist incident such as what we saw, so close to home, is something that is quite distressing for many of us who live in south-west Sydney.

What do we actually know? We know that the police allege what happened, who the victim was, who the perpetrator was and why this happened. We know that the victim was a 59-year-old Aussie bloke, as typical as you could get—a Parramatta supporter, someone who loved his Rugby League and who had been brought up most of his life living in the area. It is alleged that he was stabbed multiple times in the body, the neck and the hands, and that several of his fingers were actually cut off and the bones were protruding. We have seen the pictures of the bloodstained floor in the hairdressing salon to which the victim fled. We have seen pictures, which I understand will be shown on TV tonight, of the attacker with a large knife belting on the door yelling, 'Allahu Akbar. Someone is going to die today.'

What has also been reported is that the alleged attacker was someone who grew a hatred of Australia. It is reported by one of the media outlets today that this gentleman, as far back as 2013, exhibited a hatred of Australia, allegedly because of our involvement with America in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and he had actually gone on a bizarre rampage with a large pair of scissors, cutting down Australian flags that people were proudly flying in their backyards.

What can we do to try and change people's perspective? What could have been done so that this young man would not have gone down that road? I can think of one thing: we need to be clearer and we need to be louder in our speech that we are proud of our nation. You can see by this person's actions and his statements that he actually developed a hatred for Australia, a nation that had given him every opportunity, a nation that provides relief to refugees from around the world, a nation that we should all be very proud of. Yet he grew such hatred that he was able to commit this barbaric act.

I think we need to emphasise some things more and more. Firstly, when we talk about our military's involvement, our Australian military forces are something we should be very proud of. Never in our history has our military gone into a conflict for conquest or territory. We have always gone into war to protect the rights and freedoms of others. That is why we were in Afghanistan and that is why we were in Iraq. We are still in Iraq today to give freedom and opportunity to others. We should emphasise that.

Secondly, we should emphasise the important things about Australian values. We give freedom and opportunity to everyone irrespective of their race, their nationality or their religion. We only have to look at that acceptance in Australian society today: people of the Islamic faith are captains of industry, they run some of the largest corporations in our nation, they can become media personalities and famous TV presenters, they can be selected in our national sporting teams, they represent all levels of government from our local councils to our state politics and even here in our federal parliament. This is something we should be immensely proud of and something we should continue to talk up.

We should also be proud of our flag. To think that someone would run around with a pair of scissors and be so disturbed they would try to remove flags from peoples houses! We should be proud of our flag; we should be proud of our traditions; we should be proud of our heritage. We should be proud and we should never fail to talk up how proud we are and how good our nation is.

That does not mean we do not criticise when things go wrong. But we cannot have people, and there is a growing number of them, who try to demean and attack our nation and talk it down at every opportunity, because that is manna for these terrorist organisations who recruit these disturbed individuals and get them to commit these terrible atrocities. I call on all members of parliament here, when they are in the community and have the opportunity, to talk up our nation. Explain to our students in our schools the wonderful achievements that we have done, because ultimately that is the best defence that we have against localised terrorism and incidents like the one we saw in Minto in Sydney only on Saturday.

Debate adjourned.

See this speech in context