Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Early Childhood Education) Share this | Hansard source

May I start by thanking, from the bottom of my heart, the crossbench for bringing forward this motion and recognising that our social harmony, our community harmony in this country, is indeed a matter of public importance. I recall in 2016, when I delivered my first speech, I looked up at the gallery and there was a Muslim sheikh, a Jewish rabbi and a Christian pastor sitting in the gallery. It could make the opening line of a joke! But, in this case, they were there to listen to my first speech—a first, I believe, in the history of this place, to have representatives from the three Abrahamic faiths present at a first speech. They were there to hear me say these words:

It is a time when we should not allow important discussions about our future to degenerate into a competitive agenda of rights, for all rights are worth pursuing and worth pursuing with vigour.

I repeat those words now, and I add to those words: standing up against anti-Semitism does not mean that you can't also stand up against Islamophobia and vice versa. In fact, standing up against anti-Semitism compels you to also stand up for Islamophobia and any other form of hate speech and vice versa.

You would think though that what we saw in this place yesterday would have you believe that sowing the seeds of division and harvesting community tensions is a way to conduct politics for a particular political agenda, but, as David Crowe observed in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning, the opposition leader's:

attack was incendiary by design. At the very moment leaders are meant to be calm, he chose to inflame.

Shortly after I was elected to this place and shortly after I delivered that first speech, my baptism of fire into politics was our debate on section 18C and removing section 18C from the Racial Discrimination Act. As somebody who had been subject to hate speech for most of my career but also as somebody who had worked with civil society and with governments here in Australia and right across the world on social cohesion, on community tensions and particularly with young people on ensuring that young people do not get embroiled into an ideology that leads them down a path of violence and hate, I had to stand here and listen to the now opposition defend the claim that people had the right to be bigots. Suffice to say, that was my baptism into parliament, and there were many moments during that period when I wondered whether I had made the right decision to give up my career and come into this place.

I had thought we had put that behind us, as the manager of the House had said. I had thought we had moved on from those times and we had put that behind us. What we saw in this place yesterday demonstrates the fragility of social cohesion and the fragility of community harmony but also the reason why we need to be ever vigilant against those who would sow the seeds of hate, who would sow the seeds of division and who would exploit hatred and division at a time when we have communities who are feeling so traumatised, so anxious and so insecure.

I call on everybody in this parliament to uphold the values of leadership and bring us together for the sake of the people we represent.

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