Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the members for their contributions and acknowledge that this is a very significant time for our country. This is a time of national crisis, and it has been brewing away and been in the making for a long period of time. Antisemitism has always been there, as previous speakers said. It has been here for thousands of years. But in our country, the depth and the level of hatred and racism that we've seen has never been evidenced in our country's history.

When speaking to Holocaust survivors who came to our country at the end of the Second World War and who have experienced peace and tranquillity—living in an environment which has been conducive to them living safely and raising their children, contributing to civil society, being involved in philanthropic causes and contributing more generally to the betterment of this country—they say that, for the first time since 1945, they feel unsafe in this country.

There are people otherwise within the Jewish community that I've spoken to, not just in Sydney and Melbourne but across the rest of the country, who are talking about leaving our country. These are people who were born here who know little of Israel and little of that life. They're talking about leaving our country and going to Israel—a country that's under nuclear threat from Iran—because they feel safer there. This is the moment we find ourselves in.

It has been building since the horrible, dreadful circumstances of October 7 2023. Two days later, before any response from Israel, people were out chanting on the steps of the Sydney Opera House. The time was then for our country to take a very definite and strong stance against those actions. No such stance was taken. It then morphed into university campus demonstrations, which went on for months and months—no red lines and no boundaries—and targeted people who were just going about their business: Jewish students, which I spoke about before, and academics on campus who were made to feel unwelcome in an environment which had previously preached inclusion, tolerance and forbearance.

Members had their offices attacked and people were doxxed online, not because of anything they'd said or done but simply because of their surname or because of their heritage. The fact is that this has continued unabated over the course of this period. The doxxing then morphed into attacks by way of graffiti on people's places of business, their cars and now their homes. There has now been the firebombing of a synagogue and the attack on a childcare centre.

Funding has been ramped up to protect children with armed guards at Jewish schools. No other schools in Australia have that level of protection or overlay of security. We've now seen in Sydney an attempted terrorist attack, which, on the advice of the police, would have provided an attack not just on people of Jewish faith outside a synagogue but many hundreds, potentially, of Australians, with a 40-metre blast zone that would have caused the most catastrophic terrorist attack in our country's history.

So this has continued on for a long period of time, and it is no wonder that people within the Jewish community, their friends, their supporters and every Australian of good endeavour and of big heart has been condemning of the inaction that we've seen over the course of the last 12 months.

I want to thank the member for Wentworth for bringing forward this motion. It is true, though, that we worked with the member for Wentworth and the government to see struck out the original words—which were contained in paragraph 2—which read, after 'forms', 'as we condemn all similar hatred directed to any groups in our community'. The member agreed to that form of words being struck out, because we don't think that was necessary and we also think it is inexplicable to try and mount the argument that this sort of hatred, racism and antisemitism is being conveyed against any other pocket of the Australian community.

We voted against the government's motion because it stopped us from moving amendments to the member's motion, which would have strengthened the motion and provided stronger support to the community, and we'll continue to do that in further forms in this parliament. We stand with the Jewish community, we stand with every right-thinking Australian and we condemn antisemitism in every form.

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