Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I commend the member for bringing forward this motion and heartily endorse his call for ACMA to issue a community broadcasting licence to J-AIR. This is important from two perspectives that have been highlighted: the cultural and security aspects. I was just at the Queanbeyan Multicultural Festival yesterday in Queanbeyan Park, celebrating the incredible rich diversity of that community. We are supported in that by community broadcasting and the wonderful work done by many people—for example, the work that Cveta Taleski‎ does for the Macedonian community.

But, on top of that, of course, our community radio stations right across Eden-Monaro played a vital role in the disaster response in relation to what we have just been through. It was great to meet with Jon Bisset, the CEO of the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia, to reflect on that and what more support could be brought to community broadcasting. I want to commend the work of stations like Braidwood FM—Barbed Wireless, as they call it—and also Sounds of the Mountains over in Tumut, who did a fantastic job during all of that.

Reflecting on J-AIR, in particular, we have, as part of the wonderful cultural landscape, the contribution that the Jewish community of Australia has made—and the rich diversity of what is broadcast on J-AIR is a wonderful, living, breathing example of all that that community has contributed to this country. When you talk about discussions and opinions, I know that there is a joke in the community that, if you get two members of the community together, you get three opinions. So you will get a lot of lively debate and discussion, and it is a wonderful, vibrant part of our democracy.

Mention has been made of the security aspects and anti-Semitism. Alongside the member for Berowra and the member for Kooyong, I have experienced some of those vile attacks myself, as my wife and son are Jewish. It is a scourge. We have just heard in this last week comments from the Director-General of ASIO about the rising threat of extreme right-wing violence in this country. It is important to get on top of that, and radio stations like J-AIR will make a tremendous contribution to that. But we all have a role to play.

It is broader than I think many people understand. The sort of vile traffic that has been appearing on our Facebook timelines—and plugged into veterans groups, as I am, I see some of that floating around—and targeting police and other groups more broadly—is expanding as a threat that is supported by foreign intelligence. We have seen revealed in the US Senate Intelligence Committee reports on the Russian interference in the 2016 US election—which is ongoing for this 2020 election—that one of their lines of operation is to discredit liberal democracies and to undermine the social cohesion in those democracies. And one of the ways to do that has been to network and promote these right-wing groups.

There used to be a time when these extreme right-wing people used to just sit in their lounge rooms and scream at the television. Now, they are being networked, feeding on their own vile propaganda, and being spurred on by this material coming from organisations like the special technology centre and the Internet Research Agency in St Petersburg, supported and fuelled by the bot factories there and their Eastern European organised crime fronts. This stuff is vile deepfake material, manufactured, and it is having an effect in this country. We have seen the tragic circumstances of the attack over in New Zealand. We must get on top of this. We need the protection of personal data in that space, but we also need to ensure that social media companies are playing their part and accepting responsibility in limiting that terrible, vile stain on our nation and on the international community as a whole.

I know that members will endorse that, but we need a much bigger effort on how we deal with this technologically, and I hope that we can answer that call and heed the warnings that have been made by the Director-General of ASIO. It is a question now of making sure our agencies have the mandate and the means to fight that rising right-wing threat.

Also, in helping these community radio stations, it is important that we open up funding resources. I know the New South Wales Labor Party took a policy to the last election of providing a million dollars in support, plus opening up sponsorship and advertising possibilities. We also need to look at that in terms of what federal support can be brought to this. I know the federal Labor Party took a policy to the last election in relation to assisting the peak body, the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia, and we should have a look at that as well. I know that mainstream media is largely withdrawing from regional Australia. It is really those community radio stations that are filling that hole. So I salute this motion and the member for Goldstein for raising it. Let's get behind J-Air.

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