Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to start today by thanking the member for Scullin for initiating this debate and by thanking the Manager of Opposition Business and the Leader of the House for enabling MPs to continue to speak on this motion here today. I know that all MPs in this place have thought quite a lot about Jo Cox and her family over the past year. As I am a member of parliament with two young children, like Jo Cox, this incident was particularly affecting for me. For all the cynicism that besets us, I know that, almost without exception, most members of parliament take our democratic liberties extremely seriously. As any of our family members will attest, we, the members of this chamber, have in a very real sense given our lives over to those democratic ideals. There is no clock-off time. There is no off switch to being an elected representative in our community.

I tell all of my staff and all of my campaign volunteers that they will inevitably encounter people who are dissatisfied, people who are angry, in the course of our work. That is part of being in the community and part of being an elected representative. But I tell my staff and my campaign volunteers that, anytime anyone in our community criticises us or even abuses us, this should give them a warm inner glow. They should take this as a reminder of the great blessing that we enjoy, living in a democratic society where people feel free to speak out, to dissent, to criticise members of the government, without fear of being jailed, being tortured or having family members disappeared.

In this way, the murder of Jo Cox is not only a great personal calamity that feels all too close to home for members of this chamber but also a shock to something bigger that we all hold dear: the idea that we can pursue political ends without violence, that you can engage in political debate without fear for your personal safety and that our elected representatives can work as equal members of the community, not separated from them.

In this respect I want to take issue with the comments of the Leader of the House upon the referral of this motion to the Federation Chamber. I do not take issue with his intent or good faith in the slightest, and I do not say this in a sense of conflict, but it is in all of our interests to be clear about what has occurred here. When referring this motion to the chamber, the Leader of the House described this incident as a tragedy and a random act. It was not. It was a deliberate targeted atrocity. It was a planned political assassination. It was a terrorist act by a neo-Nazi. The killer had been a member of neo-Nazi, fascist and white supremacist political organisations for more than 20 years. This act was premeditated and researched. While committing this obscenity, Jo Cox's murderer shouted: 'Britain first', 'This is for Britain' and 'Keep Britain independent'. When arrested, he stated: 'It's me. I'm a political activist.' The police described this as a targeted attack. At his trial, the murderer refused to give his name. Instead, he stated: 'My name is death to traitors. Freedom for Britain.' He was assessed as being mentally competent to stand trial and responsible for his actions. His trial was managed under the terrorism case management list in the British courts.

This was not a tragedy, it was a terrorist act. After conviction, the sentencing judge stated he had no doubt that the killer murdered Jo Cox for the purpose of advancing a political, racial and ideological cause, namely that of violent white supremacism and exclusive nationalism, which is most often associated with Nazism in its modern forms. This was a terrorist act by a member of an ideology that is growing in prominence across western democracies. Indeed, research by academics from Birmingham City University and Nottingham Trent University has recorded that more than 25,000 individuals tweeted in celebration of Jo Cox's murder. Neo-Nazis are becoming increasingly emboldened in the US as well. And groups of this kind are active in Australia, including in my own region in Melbourne's west, and have attracted the attention of our counter-terrorism officials.

Jo Cox's family, and particularly her husband, have shown enormous dignity towards her murderer. Jo Cox's husband said: 'I feel nothing but pity for the terrorist who murdered my wife, the true patriot.' But he also made it clear he believed that Jo Cox would have wanted people to unite to fight against the hatred that killed her. Hate does not have a creed race or religion; it is poisonous. As elected representatives we owe it to each other to see her murder as part of something bigger that is occurring across western democracies today. In this respect, I was thinking about Hilary Benn's extraordinary speech in the House of Commons around this time last year. Speaking on the conflict in Syria, he said:

We are faced by fascists—not just their calculated brutality, but their belief that they are superior to every single one of us in this Chamber tonight and all the people we represent. They hold us in contempt. They hold our values in contempt. They hold our belief in tolerance and decency in contempt. They hold our democracy … in contempt.

What we know about fascists is that they need to be defeated. It is why, as we have heard tonight, socialists, trade unionists and others joined the International Brigade in the 1930s to fight against Franco. It is why this entire House stood up against Hitler and Mussolini. It is why our party has always stood up against the denial of human rights and for justice.

This is also why we must stand up against the rise of modern neo-Nazism. It is right that we stand up against the kind of fascism pursued by ISIS, but we must also stand up against the re-emergence of neo-Nazi fascism in western democracies. The greatest tribute that we can pay to Jo Cox's memory will be to defend and reinvigorate the democratic institutions and values that she believed in, and to which she dedicated her life, and show that we can reshape the world and build a better world through collective action, through debate, through argument and through democratic institutions without resorting to violence or force. This is the spirit in which we gather in this building every sitting. This is the spirit in which we undertake our work in our communities every day of the week. This is the spirit that we must defend in the face of the rise of neo-Nazism across western democracies.

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