Dave Sharma (Wentworth, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I wanted to begin by thanking the member for Berowra for moving this motion and thanking those opposite, including the members for Macnamara and Oxley, for speaking so passionately in support of it. This is indeed, as the member for Goldstein said, an issue that, thankfully, unites both sides of this chamber in shared abhorrence and repulsion not only of the events of the Holocaust but of some of its modern-day anti-Semitic manifestations.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day is the day that commemorates the liberation of Auschwitz in the closing stages of the Second World War. This year in January we commemorated the 76th anniversary of that. There are really two purposes to Holocaust Remembrance Day. One is the act of remembrance itself to honour the memory of the six million Jews and many millions of others who were systematically exterminated in an act of state sponsored genocide, whose lives were cut short and whose deaths continue to reverberate today. In absences in family trees, in lost relatives, in stories of migration their presence is still felt. The other purpose is a reaffirmation, firstly of the horror that took place in modern times, within the lifetimes and memories of people still with us today, but also to make sure that we never forget that and that we remain vigilant about combating the forces that gave rise to that awful atrocity and learn from it.

And this day does still echo with us. There are Holocaust survivors, of course, still with us here in Australia. I'm sure many of us have met them from time to time. They are remarkable individuals who obviously went through incredible trauma in their early lives but have nonetheless found an emotional centredness and a will to go on that has allowed them to park some of those memories they went through and lead purposeful lives. Many, of course, are helping contribute to educating people today about what the Holocaust was like and what they went through. But it also echoes with us because, unfortunately, we see alive and well today some of the bigotry, intolerance, extremism and dehumanisation that was really at the heart of the Holocaust. We see it around the world and I think, unfortunately, we do see it in Australia, whether it was the exhibition of far Right, anti-Semitic nationalists camping in the Grampians over the summer, as the member for Macnamara mentioned, whether it's the casual use of the swastika that we've seen in our electorates—I know the member for Berowra has seen that, and I've also seen it in my own electorate—or whether it's the language that's used at times to talk about other people and other faiths and to stereotype, castigate and dehumanise. Unfortunately, I think we still see that far too prevalent in our world today.

Australia, of course, took a large number of Holocaust survivors at the end of the Second World War. Our Jewish population effectively almost doubled, and I think on a per capita basis we took the most Holocaust survivors of anywhere in the world other than Israel. I recall from my time in Israel as the ambassador that something everyone there knew very well was our generosity and hospitality that was shown at that time. Jewish people had a very difficult time leaving Europe and finding a home elsewhere in the years before the war, and Australia has a chequered record there, but in the years afterwards Australia, thankfully, opened its doors and allowed people to resettle here. These Holocaust survivors have built some amazing things in Australia. They've built businesses. They've built family empires. They've risen to the highest offices in the land. Many of them are still with us. Many of them live in my electorate They built families and, often quite purposefully, had a large number of children in what can only be described, I think, as a response to those who tried to kill them and wipe them out. They've taken joy in the number of children and grandchildren they have and now, increasingly, in the number of great-grandchildren.

But I think these people, unfortunately, will soon no longer be with us, and this is why education is so important. I've been very pleased to see the money that has been put towards the Jewish and Holocaust museums announced recently in Queensland, in the ACT and in South Australia. Just a few weeks ago, I was able to visit the Sydney Jewish Museum, where they're doing a project to help remember for eternity some of these survivors by taking 3D footage of them. I will end with the words of Elie Wiesel:

We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

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