Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last week, I think people would have been stunned to hear the release of the Global Terrorism Index for 2019. Some of its findings were pretty disturbing. In particular, the report found there had been a 320 per cent increase in far Right terrorism in the West over the past five years. According to the index, far Right terrorism is more than five times deadlier, on average, than far Left terrorism. This rise in far Right extremism is not happening in isolation; it's being mirrored by an increase in hate crimes.

I have previously spoken in this chamber about the fact that we have seen some pretty terrible incidents, even in the last few months. Putting aside the horror of the Christchurch event—if that is an evil even conceivable to put aside—and looking to our own shores, you can see significantly smaller, but still disturbing, actions. I recounted to the chamber only a few months ago about a person approaching a mosque in Brisbane, in Holland Park, with a machete. That mosque itself had been vandalised with swastikas painted on it and tributes to the person who undertook those truly heinous acts in Christchurch, glorifying that person in the process. Last week, a pregnant Muslim woman was bashed in the head 14 times by someone who was known to police. This is happening. Dare I say, I frankly wonder how that would be treated if that person were of another faith.

The concern about the rise of Islamophobia is real, as has been demonstrated. The concern about anti-Semitism being on the rise is real as well. And where is the response?

I keep raising with the home affairs minister the need to take this seriously. Whether the threat is from Jihadists or if it's from right-wing extremists, they're both threats and they should be treated the same. They are threats to national security, they are threats to the safety of the general public, yet there is no genuine response to this. The claim is that the bulk of the threats that are being tracked are Jihadist. Yet we've got a global terrorism index that's showing, firstly, the rise of far-right extremism—320 per cent in five years. This whole notion that that would be ring-fenced in one country is ridiculous. These groups are using the internet, using channels like 8chan, to talk amongst each other and one-up each other in a most disgraceful way, saying that they are doing things for Tarrant, they are doing this inspired by those terrible acts in Christchurch, and we don't see any serious response out of the government at all—none whatsoever.

Again, I am not raising this in this chamber without having done the work of raising it privately with government. I most certainly have. But I don't think there is any serious treatment or any serious response to this. Where is the resourcing? Where is the raising of this as an issue? Nowhere. There is no response from the government about this. Are we to see anti-Semitic and Islamophobic behaviour on our streets escalate? The reason I feel so strongly about dealing with vilification is that vilification is the gateway to more-serious acts. When people feel that they're given some a licence to say something and incite hate, they can then act upon it.

There are grounds for having legitimate debate—absolutely. But it is not legitimate to incite hate. What we are seeing should be of concern to fair-minded people, regardless of what political party they're from, and it should be treated far more seriously.

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