Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm happy to second the motion moved by the member for Berowra. International Holocaust Remembrance Day on 27 January this year was significant for me personally. I want to take this moment to acknowledge the Treasurer, who reached out to me and asked if I'd be willing to pen a joint op-ed for the Fairfax papers on the significance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. We did, and I'm very grateful that that was published. I take this opportunity to thank him for his generous approach, and, of course, the member for Berowra for putting forward this important motion. I will always stand with anyone on any side of this place—and I know those opposite have a similar view that it is not a matter of partisanship but a matter of what it is to be an Australian—to recognise the history, to recognise the fouls that happened and to commit ourselves to it never happening again.

I also take a moment to acknowledge the significant investment that the government has made recently in Holocaust education, not just in Melbourne and Sydney but in the ACT, Queensland and other parts of the country. I believe the ambition is to have some form of Holocaust education centre in every major capital city. I think that is a wonderful initiative, and we on this side of the House absolutely support that. It's so important because Australia has always stood in direct contrast to what happened in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. Australia and Melbourne, my home town, actually had some of the highest populations of Holocaust survivors in the world. People had fled persecution and found safety and security in the wonderful multicultural community that is Australia.

My grandmother was one of those people. She left Germany in October 1938, one week before the Kristallnacht. She eventually, via a very long boat trip via Canada, made her way to Melbourne, Australia—as far away as possible, on the other side of the planet, from the world she left behind. Unfortunately, the family that she left in Germany didn't escape. They were some of the first sent to Auschwitz in 1941. I am eternally grateful to this nation and this country for being a refuge, for being a safe place, for my grandmother and for the family she, like so many other survivors, was able to establish here in Australia.

I also take this opportunity to say that not only was there a contrast in Australia welcoming survivors but in the week after the Kristallnacht we had one of the only private protests against the treatment of Jewish people in 1938 by an Indigenous man, William Cooper, who the seat of Cooper is named after. Despite not even having the right to vote in Australia, he marched from Footscray to the German consulate to deliver a letter to the German government, protesting against the treatment of Jewish people on the other side of the world. It was a truly remarkable and selfless act, one that showed his commitment to human rights not just for his people but for all people around the world. That's what International Holocaust Remembrance Day is all about. It is not exclusively to mark the atrocities against the Jewish people. Crimes were committed based on people's religion, race, gender, sexuality and political views. The Nazi regime persecuted people based on things that people had no control over, things that people were born into. That, again, is in contrast to what we have in Australia.

The final point I would make on this debate in this place is to reaffirm Australia's commitment to the lessons of the Holocaust and to the lessons against persecution. Over summer, we saw in the Grampians, in my home state of Victoria, what I would describe as a display of confidence by Neo-Nazi figures in Victoria. They were so confident that they were able to show their true signs and their true colours, hypocritically waving the Australian flag while doing the sieg heil in the Grampians. I say to the House that there is nothing less Australian than pro-Neo-Nazi symbols and gatherings. Australians fought and died fighting the Nazi regime. We remain committed to learning the lessons of the Holocaust to make sure it never happens again.

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