Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) recognises that 9 December 2018 marks the 70th anniversary of the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide;

(2) acknowledges the important role played by Australia, in particular Australia's then President of the United Nations General Assembly, Dr Herbert Vere 'Doc' Evatt, in the successful adoption of the United Nations Genocide Convention;

(3) further acknowledges Australia's leadership as being one of the first countries to ratify the United Nations Genocide Convention in 1949, and its continued commitment to the eradication of the crime through its inclusion of the United Nations definition of Genocide in the Criminal Code Act 1995;

(4) honours the primary initiator and author of the United Nations Genocide Convention, Dr Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent, who coined the word 'genocide', informed by his study of the systematic extermination of the Armenians during World War I and the Jews during World War II; and

(5) recognises the need for eternal vigilance of all countries, including Australia, to acknowledge past genocides as essential to stopping future genocides.

As the member for Goldstein, it is a privilege to be able to move the motion to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

I have moved this motion for a number of reasons. I have done this because I have one of the largest Jewish communities in Australia, and the tragedy of the Holocaust and the legacy of that genocide remain prevalent for so many people in the community that I am proud to represent and the community to the north of mine, the federal electorate of Melbourne Ports—and I understand the member for Melbourne Ports is speaking after me. I have also done this because of my Armenian heritage and understanding of the first genocide of the modern era. It wasn't just a human genocide, in the murdering of people marched through the Syrian Desert; like with the Jewish people, there was a cultural genocide too—so not just to remove people's lives and the capacity for them to be able to continue their family line but also to erase their memory, their legacy, their culture, their traditions and their capacity to be able to hand their culture onto the next generation.

It was Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish lawyer from Poland, who coined the term 'genocide', noting that he:

… became interested in genocide because it happened so many times. It happened to the Armenians, and after the Armenians, there was a very rough deal at the Versailles Conference because the criminals who were guilty of the genocide were not punished.

Seeking to rectify this injustice, he embarked upon the process of drafting a convention that would ensure that such a crime would never be repeated.

As an Australian I am of course proud of our country's incredible role in providing relief and support to the survivors of the Armenian genocide—the first international aid effort, and particularly from the great state of Victoria and the then Lord Mayor—and our role in the adoption of the UN genocide convention, as one of the founding members of the United Nations. But, as the only member of this house of Armenian descent, I remain fundamentally disappointed that our national parliament doesn't fully acknowledge the horror and tragedy of the genocide against the Armenians. I would hope that we would acknowledge the genocide against all people where they occur. Healing is enlivened when you cauterise a wound, because you clean it and you recognise that the damage that has been done is a pathway to healing. Acknowledging and honouring those who lost their lives and making sure that those who committed the crime are held to account and no longer feel that they can get away with it without proper critique, criticism and condemnation from the international community are critical to stopping future genocides.

In addition to his work on the Holocaust, Dr Lemkin also wrote about the Ottoman government's systemic extermination of 1.5 million Armenians as well as many unfortunate Greeks and Syrians. He was incredibly moved by the stories of Armenians being forced to march into the Syrian Desert, marching to their death. It is due to Lemkin's work that we understand why we cannot turn a blind eye to genocide. Since 1948, we have seen genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and, recently, in 2003, in Darfur. There have also been genocides against the Kurds, with mass exterminations. These should not go unacknowledged or unpunished.

Our collective responsibility, as members of a community of nations and as a state beholden to the genocide convention that we honour today, is to prevent, to call out and to punish the perpetrators of genocide where it occurs in the world. But it becomes difficult to do so when we're unable to acknowledge the original sin that led to the defining of the term. It's silence that condemns those who lost their lives through an action by those who know to do better. It's silence that leaves people in pain. It's silence that ensures that that there is no proper redress for crimes committed in the past. The motion today is about calling out that silence in this parliament, across everybody, to make sure that these crimes never happen again.

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