Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

I am quite sad to be rising in the Federation Chamber to have to speak on a bill such as this. The Criminal Code Amendment (Hate Crimes) Bill 2024 is a necessary bill to come before this parliament, but it should be very unnecessary. In 2025 we shouldn't have to pass a bill such as this. We shouldn't have to be discussing this in parliament when there are so many other issues at hand which are placing such pressure on Australians. We should be discussing matters of the economy, matters of the environment and matters of defence, but instead we are here spending an inordinate amount of time discussing something that should not be necessary.

I came to parliament this morning and was stopped by a red light. Across the road, a woman walked, brandishing, rather proudly, a Palestinian flag. That is okay; she is free to do that. We live in a democracy. But the number of Palestinian flags that are being waved and the amount of hatred that is coming out across the nation are beyond belief. It's not just in capital cities. Just before the former Treasurer Josh Frydenberg presented his very good documentary last year, I spoke to him, as I do every week. I spoke to him about the fact that this isn't just something confined to Sydney and Melbourne. This is right across Australia.

Indeed, I'm sad to say that, in my hometown of Wagga Wagga, the antisemitism is rife. And it should not be so. We have a fellow who, in his Fitzmaurice Street shopfront window, displays words and images I would not repeat here. The constituents of my electorate and visitors to Wagga Wagga file daily into my electorate office on the same street—on the next block, just up the road from where this shopfront is—complaining every day. The same people go to our local police station just around the corner on Tarcutta Street and complain. Yet the police say there's nothing they can do given the laws that we have. It is apparently okay to display, in huge letters, four-letter words that should not be seen—not be seen by children with impressionable minds and not be seen by adults. Yet, every week, he comes up with a new image and a new form of words. If that isn't antisemitism, then I don't know what is. Yet our police are apparently powerless to stop this.

Constituents complain to me, and I have to say I'm probably the only community leader in Wagga who has been game enough and brave enough to say something about it. I have copped it. I have copped it from him. I have copped it on social media. I've got this group of people who call themselves 'Sundays for Peace', who up until just recently—indeed up until Australia Day—were meeting every Sunday. I won't say 'meeting'; I'll say 'protesting'. Admittedly, there have been gatherings where twice my office has been daubed with unnecessary posters and unnecessary images and artwork, which I'd call graffiti. I've gone to the police twice, and, again, the police say they're powerless because I'm a public figure. Yet, if I went round and daubed this person's shopfront window with slogans and material that he found offensive, I would be charged, and the police have told me that. The police have also told me, 'It would be best if you didn't go to your electorate office at the same time on a Sunday,' because of these people. I have spoken to the Prime Minister, and he has told me that he hasn't been able to go to his Newtown electorate office because of the same sort of situation, the same sorts of protestors.

They used to call themselves 'Fridays for Future'. When we were in government and I was the Deputy Prime Minister, they were protesting about the climate. But you know what? When Labor took over, apparently the climate altered for the better. Everything was good again, and then, of course, we had October 7 2023, that day of infamy. Not long after that, the protestors arrived. Initially, I went out to greet them, as I always would, to talk to them rationally and sensibly about what they were protesting. I always do that. I was shouted down. I was told that I was cheering on—and I stopped this fellow short before he could say 'the murder of children', but that was what they'd suggested a little prior to that. Then, when I arced up and said, 'That is not the case. I have said publicly that a Palestinian baby is every bit as innocent as an Israeli baby,' they weren't satisfied with that. When I was challenging them on that precept, they said, 'Well, the Prime Minister is cheering on the murders.' I said, 'No, no—the Prime Minister has not said that. He has not uttered those words and you should not say that.'

Then they found it necessary to go to an animal remembrance military commemoration in the Victory Memorial Gardens, of all things. They decided to take their protest there knowing that I was there and that there would be media. They were waving their Palestinian flags in front of the light horse re-enactment troop, getting in the way and getting up in people's faces with their mobile phones to take photos. Someone asked me to call the police, and I did. I wasn't the first one to call the police, but I did call the police, and the police came. As I was walking back through the park with my wife and family, I was yelled at. They said: 'Baby killer! Baby killer!' I won't cop that, but I had to. I turned and all I said was: 'I have not ever said that. I have only ever said in the parliament that an Israeli and Palestinian baby are both born innocent and that they deserve all the peace and freedom that children are entitled to.' That wasn't good enough. They still screamed at me. A couple of days later there was a letter to the editor of the Wagga Daily Advertiser saying that I had screamed at them, and they've continued this.

The next time I happened to be near my electorate office on a Sunday, again, they were yelling: 'Baby killer! Baby killer!' This is not Wagga Wagga, and yet, because I've objected, I'm somehow the subject of their remarks. I can cop that; I'm big enough. My shoulders are broad enough; it's water off a duck's back. But that should not be happening in Wagga Wagga. They've had marches down the main street where they've talked about the killing of babies, and they're only one sided. It is antisemitism. I don't care what anybody says. They'll probably read this speech in the Hansard and I'll be the subject of their derision again. Well, go your hardest, seriously!

The difficulty is that they do make such a protest, and we've got a fellow in the local paper, Ray Goodlass, who writes a weekly column—sometimes it's more than weekly—and only ever presents one side of the argument, the pro-Palestinian argument. Their columns are so biased. And that's all the Wagga Wagga people are subjected to. They don't hear the other side unless it comes from me. That is a problem because, if you keep chipping away, people start to think, 'Well, maybe they're right,' and they're not right. They are wrong. They are absolutely wrong because it is antisemitism, and these shopfront displays and flagrant displays of antisemitism ought to stop. The police ought to have powers to make that happen. I am a big believer in free speech, but this is out of control.

I made comments about Sheikh Abdulghani Albaf, the new principal of the New Madinah College at Young, in the South West Slopes in the Riverina electorate, who has made some highly inappropriate remarks on social media. He talked about when I first objected to his posts and a letter I had written to a constituent from Young. In the posts and in the comments on his social media, he described me as 'human look like animal' and invoked 'Allah the best disposer'. This is not Australia. Don't bring your problems to our country. We can't solve the Middle East crisis from Fitzmaurice Street in Wagga Wagga, the streets of Sydney or indeed the steps of the Opera House. We cannot. This country has a proud multicultural history.

The Riverina is, I believe, the cradle of multiculturalism. Heaven knows we brought so many people from so many disparate and desperate nations to turn a desert into a fertile Garden of Eden, which we now call the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area. They worked together—people from all nations in Europe who had not that long before been fighting with weapons. These days some people fight with words, and they convince Australians to do so too. Sadly, that is why we need legislation such as this. It's so that we can combat words and we can right the wrongs.

We shouldn't have to pass legislation like this, but the words uttered on 9 October on the steps of the Opera House—I have to say, I felt sorry for the police. I know that they listened to the tapes and came out with a view that what was suggested was said against the Jews wasn't, but we all know it was. We all know that they hate the Jews. Why people hate Jewish people I can't comprehend. I just cannot comprehend it, and I can't comprehend it in a society such as Australia, where we welcome people from all nationalities, all faiths and all orientations. We do, we should and we will go on doing that, but the comments by the sheik, who is now the principal of New Madinah College at Young—he needs to turn his language down. I've said so and I've been castigated for it.

Sundays for Peace, who are now meeting only once a month, shouldn't be meeting at all. Heaven help us if they actually spent their time working for St Vincent de Paul, Anglicare or some other organisation. Their hours would be much better spent and the Wagga Wagga community would be far better off if they did that rather than wasting their time perhaps waiting for me to visit my electorate office on a Sunday so they can scream abuse at me. I won't cop people screaming abuse at my wife, Catherine. I will not do that. I come to this place willingly, and it's a great honour and a great privilege, but my family should not be subjected to the sort of abuse that they rain down upon us. She's big enough and tough enough to withstand that as well, but it is certainly so unnecessary. My staff shouldn't have to clean up the office when they decide to put their posters up with thick glue on the back. That shouldn't have to happen. Our police should have powers to tap them on the shoulder.

This fellow, Michael Agzarian, denied doing it, yet, when the police said, 'Is this is you on the CCTV?' he had to admit it was him. That is the sort of people they are. It has to stop, because Wagga Wagga is a wonderful community. I say it's the best place to live in all of Australia. Of course I would; I'm biased. I love the place. I was born there. I've lived in and around Wagga Wagga all my life. It should not be a place for antisemitic comments and a group, which meets only once a month on Sunday, that is quite frankly just another branch of the Greens. The Greens have a lot to answer for in this whole debate. The Greens have a lot to answer for regarding the divisive activities that have occurred right across our nation.

I feel sorry that the Prime Minister can't go to his electorate office because of these actions. I do believe that the Prime Minister should have been stronger earlier on this issue, but he wasn't. But he shouldn't be subjected to the sort of rubbish that he has been. Nor should it happen in Wagga Wagga. As I say, it's not just the capital cities; it is right across the nation. It has to stop. The Jews have actually done a lot for our nation. They are Australians, and we, and all Australians, should support them.

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