Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the Speaker and the member for Fadden. This motion mentions the 70th anniversary of a very exciting, vital and happy nation of eight million people, but I'm not going to focus on that; I'm going to focus on the main point of the member for Fadden's motion: the sharp contrast with what nearly happened during the Second World War. This was synthesised in a sinister speech delivered at the Berlin Sportpalast on 30 January 1939 by Adolf Hitler. It was an attempted repudiation of President Roosevelt's attempt to deal with aggression throughout the world and to seek some assurances from the German Chancellor.

I want to particularly thank the member for Fadden for his thoughtful taking up of the member for Isaacs' raising of the 80th anniversary of the fateful Evian conference, convened by President Roosevelt in 1938 at Evian-les-Bains in France, with 31 other countries to discuss the plight of refugees fleeing the horror of Nazism. It's an anniversary the member for Fadden has given us an opportunity to atone for. Unfortunately, the representative of Australia at the conference, Lieutenant Colonel TW White, brought a message of indifference to that conference. He didn't go on his own authority; he spoke for the executive government of the day. Australia said it didn't have a racial problem and didn't seek to import one—a grotesque message given the sinister events of the time.

I also want to commend my good friend the member for Eden-Monaro, former Brigadier Mike Kelly, who recounted in his speech little known connections with the Jewish people of Palestine, who were trying to survive the Second World War, and connections with the First World War, including with his extraordinary family. They were amazing stories. I didn't know that David Ben-Gurion, the first Labour Prime Minister of Israel, served under the Australians in the First World War and that Moshe Dayan lost his eye with the Australian machinegun battalion, spotting for the 7th Division as a forward artillery observer in Lebanon in the Second World War.

I focus on the fact that the member for Fadden has organised for the resolution, supported by all sides of the Australian parliament, to be presented to the Israeli museum, Yad Vashem, which is famous throughout the world. It's a memorial museum to the murdered millions of the Second World War. The idea of this resolution was to be presented as a bipartisan, non-partisan repudiation by modern-day Australians of that terrible indifference to our colleagues in the Israeli Knesset and to be placed right next to Colonel White's infamous declaration: 'We don't have a racial problem and we don't seek to import one.' I think nothing could be more thoughtful than this, and I commend the many members who spoke on it in the debate earlier today in the House.

On the weekend I had the joy of celebrating my niece's wedding in Byron Bay to Gil Baker, the grandson of Yossele Baker. I danced with Yossele Baker, the patriarch of the shattered Baker family, who came to Australia after the Second World War. The Baker family is now united with the equally small Danziger family from which I come. My father was one of the refugees who luckily made it to Australia.

Australia's rhetoric prior to the Second World War was a lot worse than its actual actions. Eight thousand refugees from Germany were accepted into this wonderful country. Our two families who survived—indeed flowered—in this extraordinary country are a repudiation of the indifference of Lieutenant Colonel White. My late uncle's firm is responsible for all of the woodwork around us in this very parliament—all the floors, all the parquetry, everything—because he was sent to Schleswig-Holstein by his parents to get him out of Germany to Australia to learn, and he had to have carpentry. All I can say, in response to this resolution is: Am Yisrael Chai.

See this speech in context