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

As it happens, the Thursday before Mr Malaspina was killed in the streets of Melbourne, I had a hearing of the Treaties Committee in the city. I don't go into the city much these days and I decided to flake off from the hearing and go to Pellegrini's for a bit of comfort food at lunchtime, as I have for 40 years. My late mother, Margaret, had an art gallery in Exhibition St. It's also around 40 years since her passing. As her assistant, I was paid in lasagne and would be sent up to Pellegrini's as a very sophisticated 14-year-old to have lunch there—to have, as someone said, a mocha in a glass and to have one of the wonderful apple strudels that Pellegrini's provided. Always sitting at the end of the counter was Mr Malaspina, with his signature cravat, the paper and a black coffee. Pellegrini's, symbolically, gave free black coffees to all of their longstanding customers the day they reopened after his tragic death.

I can't imagine a person who's more iconic to Melbourne who is not in show business or in politics or well known on TV and who so many people had an affection for and who embodied that great postwar immigration that Australia has benefited from. It's hard to imagine Melbourne without the Italians or the Italian contribution. Mr Malaspina always had a good word for people. He was always encouraging. He was always interested in sports. He was a strong Essendon supporter, and you'd always have a conversation with him there.

One of the things about Pellegrini's that's burned into the memories of Melburnians is that it has been the same since it opened. You sit at the bar there. You go there after the theatre for a gelato. You take a break during the day and have a coffee there. It was the first place in Melbourne that had a mocha coffee. I thought I was so sophisticated, at 14 or 15, having something like that there. And it was all made possible by Mr Malaspina and his partner. It's a great institution. People who don't go there for many years and then come back from overseas—they come back from travelling—and start working in the city always go into Pellegrini's and make use of it. My brother and his family often, in recent years, would go in there on a Friday night. The last time they did that was with my daughter prior to Simon's daughter, Shani, commencing work at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in the emergency department, where she's one of the leading nurses. So it's custom for the Danbys to go into the kitchen at Pellegrini's prior to Shani beginning work. It was not just our family custom; it was the custom of so many Melburnians to drop into that place for some comfort food—a signature place that embodied successful Italian migration and the wonderful culture that they brought to our state and our city.

The funeral at St Pat's was incredibly moving. I and Peter Khalil, the member for Wills, stood there waiting for the Leader of the Opposition, who joined us there. We saw so many people that are prominent in Melbourne life, in business and in politics. Ordinary people who we know from sports and from community organisations all were there to pay their respect. The funeral booklet is, indeed, incredibly tragic. It has a picture of him as a young, confident man in his striped shirt and cravat next to a picture of him in a similar kind of shirt—I wouldn't say the same shirt—with a cravat, holding his baby granddaughter. As the member for Swan said, Sofia was born one week before he was foully murdered by this terrorist. Many people have said to me that he embodied the ideal type of immigrant that came to Australia in the postwar immigration—hard working, friendly, family conscious, building up their own business, bringing their own culture to Melbourne and making it a much more cosmopolitan place.

I regret having to end this tribute to Mr Malaspina by noting something. I'm going to be writing about this and doing something more about it. I think it's important to say we have, in a nonpartisan way in this parliament, often done great things via the intelligence committee—that is, we've passed laws that have prevented mass casualty attacks. Of course, this attack was a paradigm of what these jihadists do all around the world—drive a vehicle full of gas bottles to try and blow it up amongst pedestrians, and then jump out and stab people. This happens in Kabul. This happens in London. This happens all around the world. We, here in the Australian parliament, have been very responsible, working together to try and minimise these problems, and I don't underestimate it. And because of the nature of the Australian Senate, the government and the opposition have to vote together in order to see these kinds of laws passed. There have been, some people say, 80 bills—I say it's closer to 50—that have dealt with this since 9/11, since 3,000 Americans and more than 10 Australians were murdered in the Twin Towers in New York.

Unfortunately, there is one group of people which hasn't supported that serious concern with the welfare, security and safety of ordinary Australians, and that's the Greens political party. In every piece of legislation since 9/11, the Greens political party have voted against measures taken by both the opposition and government, and no-one holds them to account. They have their secret state and national conferences. They have a very low bar that they're judged by. But I think there's no more sacred right of Australian citizens to have safety and security. That's the most important human right that this parliament guarantees for the citizens of this country.

An iconic person, who literally hundreds of thousands of Victorians, of Melburnians, or people who visit Pellegrini's from around Australia would have known through the decades since he took over ownership of that establishment in 1974, was murdered in the streets of Melbourne by one of these people who we've all done our best to prevent having success and killing even more people. We've been very successful, with legislation for foreign fighters and for 14- to 18-year-olds who were not previously catered for by the law who involved themselves in terrorist incidents, such as the terrible event that happened in Parramatta where a 15-year-old boy murdered a Chinese-Australian police accountant. We've done everything we can to prevent this. But we are not joined in our responsibility by people who are irresponsible, and they should be held to account. You can't live in a beautiful cosmopolitan, pluralist society like Australia and not do things to protect it. The vast majority of people here are very tolerant, very intelligent and determined to make sure that we continue to live in the kind of society that we do. The parliament embodies it by the sensible legislation that it has passed. We always do everything we can to protect people's civil liberties and human rights, and we have sunset clauses et cetera. I'm all in favour of that; but when we're faced with these dangers, we must act.

It's very unfortunate that in every piece of legislation—and I have research from the Parliamentary Library to show that—that the Greens political party is totally irresponsible and does not want to protect the safety of Australians, the primary human right of every citizen in this country.

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