David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

This Criminal Code Amendment (Hate Crimes) Bill is a really important bill because it's addressing a fatal and disappointing development in Australian society. That is the rise of antisemitism, which has grown exponentially since the Hamas terrorist invasion of Israel and the kidnapping and killing of many innocent people. That was a day of murder, torture, kidnapping, brutal sexual violence and the massacring of children and innocents. It was cruel, it was barbaric and it was unbelievable.

Yet in Australia we saw, on the steps of the Opera House no less, in the middle of Australia at one of Australia's iconic landmarks, ranting and chanting by supporters of Hamas that went unpunished. The law was not enforced by the New South Wales police. I could not believe it at the time. It is an offence to incite people to violence, let alone to give aid to declared terrorist organisations. Then, this acceptance or turning of a blind eye—

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 17:02 to 17:21

As I was saying, there was a failure to enforce the law in failing to prosecute and in attempting to arrest people who were inciting violence based on the criteria of religious belief. Blatant antisemitism has been uncovered. I'm a big believer in free speech and the right to protest but it's not legal to incite people to violence or to spray-paint businesses' cars and torch them, attack places of religious worship, firebomb children's daycare centres or vandalise people's houses. That is not legitimate political expression; that is illegality.

The current government have been asleep at the wheel. They have failed to prosecute or—not necessarily the act of arresting; that would be up to state police. But they have failed to condemn. They have failed to condemn universities tolerating the occupy movements plastering universities with antisemitic graffiti, allowing discrimination and the ostracising of both academics and students in universities, doxxing people and actually arguing for the actions of Hamas and Hezbollah.

Supporting a registered terrorist organisation by physical or other means is illegal in this country. But these laws have been left unapplied, and that is why antisemitism has grown. On a diplomatic and international scale, the current government has made moral equivalence a justification for not doing anything because of stuff it feels is Islamophobic. But it's just not realistic. On the international stage we have abandoned our support for Israel. We have voted against Israel, the one democracy in the Middle East that has the rule of law and lets people vote. It's a shame that Australia has really let its standards drop in supporting any of those things I've mentioned.

This bill, in putting some teeth behind applying the law, is a little bit too late. We need strong leadership from this government and also from state governments, who should have had their police forces enforcing this. The fact that our security agencies were not engaging with the current federal government tells you enough about their opinion of what's going on in this government. In question time today, we saw the Prime Minister obfuscate. He wouldn't admit that the security agencies didn't want to brief him because they were worried about his administration leaking any information, which would hinder them identifying the perpetrators.

And the caravan packed with explosives. My goodness! That was just an abject failure of our intelligence capability, when local neighbours identified the caravan. It goes on and on. Vandalising synagogues and trying to torch them in Sydney, and then the Adass synagogue in Melbourne, were just absolute shocks. I cannot believe that Australia has let down the standards of applying the rule of law and having a tight, well-connected intelligence network. It really is a cause for concern.

These proposed changes seek to lower the threshold for criminality for those that urge violence against individuals or groups. Instead of intending that violence occur, police now only need to prove that the person was reckless as to whether violence would occur. These laws also propose removing the good faith defence for those urging violence. It is really appropriate, because how can you urge someone to engage in acts of violence in good faith. I mean, it's really, totally unrealistic. It's long overdue that the Criminal Code Amendment (Hate Crimes) Bill has finally been introduced for us to discuss. The coalition did write to the government about it before parliament resumed in October. It's been to a committee and was examined carefully. The recommendation from the review was that this should come before the parliament.

The bill also needs to be a bit stronger to cover attacks on places of worship. It needs to be blindingly clear that any antisemitic action is not acceptable in Australia. As I have said, the consequences of us being ambiguous about what is tolerable under the law are really important. I do not want to stifle free speech, but free speech doesn't mean you can incite people to violence or say 'kill Jews' or 'kill anyone'. That is a different matter; that is not free speech. That is against the law. I commend these amendments to the House.

I hope that our security agencies do get to the bottom of who has initiated the caravan full of high explosives, and who the people are that are paying some of our gangs—not necessarily people from overseas, but getting local criminals and gangsters to do this for a fee because they need to face the full force of the law as well. There must be jail time for any of this behaviour, otherwise, people will do what they have been doing. They feel like their weird, twisted version of what should be done is being tolerated because silence from the authorities and inaction by the bodies that enforce the law have emboldened them. As I've said, universities have questions to answer about them tolerating support of terrorist organisations in their own institutions and having academics and students afraid to move freely in their own institutions. It really is a wake-up call for Australia.

This bill is long overdue, and I support it. Let's hope that Australia gets its strength back and supports Israel. They have an existential question of survival. That's why they went to war against Hamas and Hezbollah. People don't realise that it's not just about the land and occupying areas on the West Bank. There is an administration called Hamas, and there is Hezbollah, which are backed by Iran. Their whole plan is not to just get back a bit of land. They want Israel wiped off the map, and we can't let that happen. What we can do in this country, though, is make it crystal clear that the behaviour we've seen should never have been tolerated and should've been called out when it happened, and then we wouldn't have let this monster out of the bag. We need to put it back in. Antisemitism has been through the ages: the pogroms in the Middle Ages, the pogroms in the Russian Revolution in and after World War I and then again with the Nazi Holocaust. The rest of the world, including Australia, supported the creation of the State of Israel at the United Nations. It has a right to exist, and we in Australia should be supporting that right. We shouldn't be tolerating any more of this horrible behaviour that we've seen in our own country.

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