Zoe McKenzie (Flinders, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In this place we all agree—or, at least, I think we all agree—that the No. 1 responsibility of government is to keep its citizens safe. I have now lost count of the number of times this Albanese government has failed in its most primary responsibility through its fundamental failure to carefully manage Australian's immigration system. This week it has been laid bare that no robust vetting processes were applied to the 2,922 tourist visas issued to people coming from Gaza. Of the 1,300 who have used their visa to come to Australia, despite persistent questioning this week, we do not know how many of these tourists were required to undertake face-to-face interviews or subjected to biometric testing to make sure that we were not bringing into Australia anyone who was involved in the 7 October attacks, anyone who participated in the ransacking or looting which followed, anyone who supported or housed terrorists or weapons or anyone who in any other way supported the extremists or terrorism sympathisers.

The ability to live in Australia is the most precious of privileges. We are a free, democratic, liberal, pluralistic and tolerant society. Like all of us in this place, I get to attend citizenship ceremonies. They are instances of the purest joy as we recognise and thank those who have left their homes to create prosperous, productive lives for their families in this beautiful country. Australia's immigration system gives us in this place the right to decide who comes to Australia and the circumstances in which they come, and that places on our shoulders the responsibility of guarding Australia's borders and looking after her people.

Those opposite seem to care none for that responsibility. The granting of visas without the necessary rigor undermines trust in our migration system. The issuance of tourist visas en masse, knowing full well that the recipients of them were unlikely to go home, mocks the sacrifice and endeavour of every immigrant who has come to this country. This week we learned almost 3,000 visas have been granted, most in less than 24 hours. Tens of questions to the Prime Minister this week have not revealed whether any security checks had been done before their issuance. Those opposite have argued that this is the same system as every other time we have brought people here from a war zone. Really? The humanitarian visas granted to Syrians in 2017 involved biometric tests, face-to-face interviews in third-party countries where necessary and crosschecking with US intelligence datasets. At the moment, Australia is unique in its willingness to hand over visas, ones usually provided to tourists coming here for a holiday, to people from a war zone currently controlled by a terrorist group. It is worth noting, once again, how cautious our key intelligence partners have been. Canada has issued 254 visas, the United Kingdom has issued 168, New Zealand has issued 153 and the USA has issued just 17. Even France, which has a long history of working with the people of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has allowed only 260 entries from Gaza.

Gaza is a war zone. Its ruling authority, terrorist organisation Hamas, undertook the most devastating slaughter of 1,200 Jewish and Arab Israelis on 7 October. It was the greatest massacre of Jewish people since the Second World War. It is not a war like others, in which professional soldiers fight professional soldiers. As my friend the member for Berowra said in his question to the Prime Minister today, where he described some of what happened on that day, on October 7, Hamas terrorists went into small Israeli farming villages and a music festival, where they filmed themselves gleefully murdering children, raping women and mutilating their victims, including after death. Thirteen hundred innocent people were hunted down and murdered for sport, and 251 hostages were forced at gunpoint into Hamas tunnels under Gaza. On their return, thousands of people were dancing in the street in celebration.

This was an attack of abject horror, with no respect for human life, human dignity or, indeed, humanity. The acts of the terrorists were disgusting, repulsive actions of unimaginable horror executed against those who until then had lived in relative harmony with their Gazan neighbours. The Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research's June poll of this year showed so much support for Hamas's October 7 attacks, and with this level of support we must ask more questions about who comes here.

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