Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, I present the committee's report entitled Report on the review of the relisting of Hizballah's External Security Organisation as a terrorist organisation under the Criminal Code.

Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e).

by leave—Hezbollah's External Security Organisation has been listed as a terrorist organisation under the Criminal Code since 5 June 2003. It has been relisted in 2005, 2007, 2009, 2012, 2015 and in the last parliament on 2 May 2018. On 29 April this year Hezbollah's External Security Organisation was relisted again, and this report marks the completion of the intelligence and security committee's review of that decision. All members of the committee support the relisting of Hezbollah's External Security Organisation as a terrorist organisation because of its record of directly and indirectly engaging in and supporting terrorist acts.

However, as the committee did in June 2018, we are again asking why the government has decided to confine the relisting of Hezbollah only to its external security organisation. In June 2018 the intelligence and security committee recommended that further consideration be given to extending the listing to the military wing of Hezbollah. Regrettably the government does not appear to have given this recommendation such consideration. In this report the committee has gone further than it went in 2018 by calling on the government to give consideration to extending the listing to the entirety of Hezbollah, or, at the very least, to the military wing of the organisation. The United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and the Arab League all list the entirety of Hezbollah, including its military wing, as a terrorist organisation. The overwhelming evidence to the committee has made clear that Hezbollah is a unitary organisation, and it is difficult to see how it can realistically or reasonably be subdivided into separate parts, only one of which constitutes a terrorist organisation.

Let's be clear about who and what Hezbollah is. I have visited the Asociacion Mutual Israelita Argentina, a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires. In 1994 a van loaded with explosives was driven into the building by a suicide bomber, killing 85 people and injuring hundreds more. All of the evidence points to Iran and Hezbollah being behind the bombing. Given that even some representatives of Hezbollah itself have said that it is delusional to draw a distinction between the so-called military and political wings of the organisation, I find it difficult to understand why it should matter what part of Hezbollah carried out this devastating attack against the Jewish community of Buenos Aires.

In 2019 the United Kingdom moved from listing only the military wing of Hezbollah to listing the whole of the organisation. In announcing the decision in the House of Commons on 26 February 2019, the United Kingdom Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, said:

There have long been calls to ban the whole group, with the distinction between the two factions derided as smoke and mirrors. Hezbollah itself has laughed off the suggestion that there is a difference. I have carefully considered the evidence and I am satisfied that they are one and the same, with the entire organisation being linked to terrorism.

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This Government have continued to call on Hezbollah to end its armed status; it has not listened. Indeed, its behaviour has escalated; the distinction between its political and military wings is now untenable. It is right that we act now to proscribe this entire organisation.

Here in Australia, the Morrison government has not followed the clear approach of our key allies, without, it must be said, explaining its position publicly, even at the most general level. This is unsatisfactory, to say the least. I urge the government to read the committee's bipartisan report carefully and take its recommendation seriously. The Australian people deserve no less.

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