Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of Criminal Code Amendment (Hate Crimes) Bill 2024. I speak as, and I am putting on my hat as, someone who came to this country as a 12-year-old child in 1984. I grew up here as an 'other'—a child of migrants. During my childhood and my adolescence, I did, from time to time, encounter racism. There's no question about that. It sort of comes with the territory, if you like.

Initially, it was overt, and then, as I grew older and became an adult and started seeking job opportunities, it was probably more covert. However, at no time did I have to encounter the kind of systemic and degrading hate that my Jewish community are now experiencing. I didn't wake up to street corners being defaced. I didn't wake up to schools turning into battlegrounds. I didn't wake up to entire communities feeling like they were under threat. In fact, my experience was quite the opposite; there were intermittent episodes of racism but, because it was not systemic, I still felt and was able to build a sense of belonging in this country. It was not robbed from me in the way my Jewish community are currently experiencing. At no time did I feel like I was an alien in my own country. In fact, it was quite the contrary; I grew up and I thrived, thanks to the welcoming nature of my fellow Australians. It was a nation that changed with me and became far more diverse as I grew.

I'm now standing here as a parliamentarian in a country that I don't recognise. I don't understand what is going on in this country that is making it acceptable for some people—and they are a minority—to walk around spreading hate against a community of fellow Australians. I just don't understand it. My Jewish community, for context, is large. I have around 6,500 Australians who have a Jewish heritage. This community are highly active. They are contributors. Many of them have been here for multiple generations. They are overwhelmingly descendants of Holocaust survivors. In fact, the largest community of Jews who are descended from those who survived the Holocaust live in Melbourne. This is baked into their DNA, and it is spread from one generation to another. They're acutely attuned to the vibrations that can tear at our social fabric and can lead to the Shoah, the Holocaust.

My community are active in every single domain right across the economy, from business to professionals to creatives. They are also philanthropists—some of the most generous people who have decided that they want to give back to our country. They have prospered through their work ethic, and they have contributed back to every domain, whether it be in the arts community, business, health or research—particularly in medical research. These people are contributors to our country, yet they now feel like they are aliens in their own land, vilified and made to feel 'other'—isolated. To be honest, they are frightened. Their livelihoods and their lives feel like they are under threat.

I call out special thanks and tribute to my Chabad centre in Malvern. I spoke of people who contribute—these are people who contribute. They run an early childhood education and care centre which employs non-Jewish childcare workers who choose to work there because of the culture of the place. It is so welcoming and warm and it is a proud institution that champions the Jewish faith and inculcates it in small children. I want to also pay special thanks to Rabbi Velly from Chabad Malvern who, of his own accord and with minimal training, set up a mental health group for men. As you all know, I am chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Men's Health. He did this because he found that there was a need for men in the shadows—not just in the Jewish community but also outside that community—to speak about their lived experience, particularly with respect to addiction: a taboo within a taboo. He runs, on a regular basis, a small community group of men who come together to talk about addiction. He links this program of care with the spiritual journey of what it is to be a Jew, because that is how he expresses his Jewish faith—as service unto others. The group is attended by Jewish men as well as non-Jewish men. That tells you something about the sense of giving that the Jewish community has towards the wider community.

In my own community, I also want to call out and pay tribute to King David School. This a truly wonderful school that sits on the more progressive end of the Jewish spectrum. It is a heterogenous group of people, like everyone else in Australia; you can't just dump us all into buckets. There is a mosaic within communities and within minorities. This school links antiquity to modernity. It bakes in at every level—from the early learning centre all the way to year 12—the importance of the Jewish faith, Judaism and linkages to Israel. I had the honour of opening one of the rooms in their early childhood education centre which is named after a particular type of wheat that is regarded as a staple in the Jewish faith and has sustained the people of Israel. The King David School, while embedding the Jewish faith and pride in their students, very much promotes a perspective that is outward looking in their students. The students are not sheltered and are not taught to become insular—quite the opposite. In year 9, they send these students out to engage with the rest of the community. Right now, it's pretty hard for those kids. Do they feel safe entering the wider, mainstream community as young Jewish kids? Do they even wear their uniforms? Occasionally, they don't. Do they wear their jewellery that declares that they are Jewish? They often conceal it, because right now things are not safe. This is a country I do not recognise.

Because of this Jewish community that I got to know and learned so much from, I went to Israel twice. I'm the only parliamentarian who visited Israel twice last year. The first visit was in July, by invitation from the speaker of the parliament, to visit the Knesset. It was extraordinary. I went with a multipartisan group of other parliament members. We had the honour of visiting many, many sights in Israel—Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Be'er Sheva where the ANZACs fought. We also had the opportunity to visit the Palestinian Authority and engage with the then Palestinian leadership in Ramallah. It was an eye-opener. At the time, Israel was gripped by protests over the proposed changes to the judicial system. It was really hot, and in the heat—40-degree days—you could see thousands of people, sometimes young families with children strapped to their backs, holding the Israeli flag and marching. Thousands and thousands of people would do that. You could not miss these protests. It showed me how passionate Israelis are about their country, their system of government and their democracy.

My second visit was in December in the aftermath of October 7. I was offered this trip to go on. It was sponsored by AIJAC. My colleague Josh Burns, the member for Macnamara, and other members from the coalition attended. I didn't hesitate when given the opportunity. Why? Because I wanted to see for myself what had happened. Until then I had read about it in the media, but I wanted to remove that filter of the media and those biases; there always are biases when you read or consume media. I wanted to see it for myself, and I wanted to go in support of, and show my support in a very tangible way to, my Jewish community. There are things I saw which I cannot unsee. There are smells that I smelt which I cannot forget. I remember there was a moment when I stood at a site in Sderot, a town that had its police station demolished. It took a bulldozer, and it took gunships dropping bombs for about 17 hours to demolish this police station, with terrorists, policemen and service personnel inside because the walls were fortified. I stood on that site, which was basically levelled, with a few bits of concrete and debris, and gave a TV interview. I could smell death rising up from the earth. I'm a doctor; I've smelt death before. It's not something that I will ever forget.

What I did not expect, though, was to see the level of antisemitism unleashed against Jewish Australians here when I returned. My community warned me from the very beginning that this would escalate, and that if you give antisemitism a foothold, give it an inch, it will accelerate. That is exactly what has happened. That is exactly what has played out, because the Jews are the canaries in the coalmine. We have absolutely seen that happen in 2025, where this has become a daily occurrence in this country. It's completely unacceptable. But I knew this, because I'd also had the opportunity in July last year to visit Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial. For those of you who cannot get there in person, I suggest you educate yourselves by jumping online and having a look at the Yad Vashem website or visiting one of your local Holocaust museums in your major cities. Soon there will be a national museum built here in Canberra with funding we have provided. But it shows how antisemitism, once it takes hold, can lead to the worst possible outcome: mass murder on a scale humanity has never seen—systematised, calculating and highly effective. It happened because of dehumanisation of the Jews. It happened because of centralisation of power. It happened because of propaganda. It happened because of demagoguery.

My fellow Australians, those elements are universal; they can happen again and again. So to think this will never happen again is a delusion. It can absolutely happen again if the circumstances are right and if those ingredients are allowed to take a foothold and thrive. It starts with dehumanising the 'other'. In some cases it's racism against people like me or people who look like me or people who are First Nations Australians. In other cases it's antisemitism. It starts with microaggressions. It starts with hate. It starts with language that makes the other feel like they don't belong there, and it robs them of their identity. Hence, I support this bill, which builds upon all the other measures this Albanese government has delivered, from outlawing the Nazi salute to the trade of Nazi symbols to anti-doxxing laws—which, unfortunately, happened again in the aftermath of Jewish creatives being doxxed but will also benefit others, particularly women, because women are the ones who get doxxed.

That brings me to my final point that although these laws are occurring in the context of unacceptable, virulent and rising antisemitism in this country, these laws will actually benefit everyone in this country. That, if there is a silver lining to this horror, is the gift of this moment. I thank the House.

I was lucky enough to be able to be in Gawler to help swear in a new raft of Australian citizens, and the joy on their faces to finally be able to say that they're Australian—there was nothing that was going to upset their day. That was replicated right across my a electorate in Playford and the City of Salisbury, and beyond my boundaries as well, in South Australia and across the country. It's a really important point to make because, at the same time we were all coming together to celebrate who we are as Australian, we had a group of people that were trying to drive a wedge of division between our communities, a group who have tried to prey on individuals who are susceptible to impressionism. When I think about this group—and there are not a lot of things that I have to say about them that are nice—they prey on young individuals within our communities who are disenfranchised, hoping they can create a sense of faux outrage and turn that into a tool to assist in their desire to drive a wedge between communities like mine. I'm talking about the National Socialist Network.

On Australia Day, they used that day of all days to march down North Terrace in Adelaide chanting, 'Australia for the white man!', wearing their black cladding and clothing and carrying on in front of our war memorial, displaying their symbols of hatred, trying to strike fear and division in my community and the community of South Australia, which is really disappointing. It's disappointing for a couple of reasons. When I got elected to this place in May 2022, I did so on the basis that I saw myself as a leader in my community. I was very privileged to have the opportunity to get the confidence of my community to represent them in this place. It makes me think about what good leadership is about, and since my election to this place, I have had the good opportunity to be part of the Defence Force parliamentary programme. I had the opportunity to go on HMAS Rankin. It's pertinent when I think about this bill and what this bill does because the motto of that vessel is 'defend the weak'. When you look up the definition of 'defend' in the dictionary it says it's 'to resist an attack made on someone or something, to protect from harm or danger'. The definition of weak is 'liable to break or give way under pressure'. Defend the weak—that's what good leaders do and that's what this bill does.

This bill enables leadership to stamp out hate and hate crimes. It's about making sure that those who have ill-will towards others in our community are held to the highest standards of our laws, as they should be. If you want to urge violence and encourage others to engage in your activities, there will be repercussions. That's exactly what needs to happen. It's not good enough to have people sitting on YouTube or at kickboxing events in the northern suburbs, walking down the main street letterboxing and doorknocking in my electorate, and inciting hatred to persecute your desire to have a white society and drive out the best thing that makes my community so fantastic—that is, the multicultural aspect. It's the bringing together of different cultures harmoniously and creating a society that is interconnected and so much better for it because we get to share everybody's experiences.

We shouldn't have to live in fear. We shouldn't have to worry about elements of our community applying pressure and trying to break the weak. That's why it's up to leaders like myself and others in this chamber today to ensure that we do defend the weak and that we stand up and call out the actions of those like the National Socialist Network, an extremist group that is trying to drive fear into the very hearts of our communities and trying to create a us-versus-them mentality that looks to ostracise anybody that they can for the purposes of their own gain.

I'm extremely proud of this legislation. I think that the minister has done a great job in bringing this forward. It's much needed, unfortunately. It shouldn't be needed. Much like the member for Higgins said, when I came to this place, the last thing I thought that we would be debating is this type of legislation because I just didn't think that we were at this point in our communities. I thought we were well past this. This is a thing of yesteryear. I thought we'd learnt from our mistakes, but, clearly, that's not the case.

We need to do better. We must do better, and that's what this bill seeks to do.

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