Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia's review of the relisting of the Hezbollah organisation as a terrorist organisation could not be more timely. On 18 July this year, a suspected suicide bomber killed six people and wounded 30 aboard a tourist bus in the coastal town of Bulgaria. Hezbollah is suspected as having had a role in the attack. Most significantly, it is the first attack by Hezbollah on Europe and it has portents for this part of the world as well.

Since the 1980s, Hezbollah and its mentor Iran, its financier and programmer, have conducted a series of international bombings, hijackings, kidnappings and assassinations against US, Israeli, European, Saudi and Iranian dissident targets. Of course, in 1994 the most famous and injurious activity of the international activities of Hezbollah became known when in Buenos Aires 115 people were killed in the blowing up of a Jewish community centre there. Argentina's official state prosecutors charged Hezbollah and the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards for using a web of diplomats and front companies to undertake this bombing.

On 16 January this year in Thailand, the Thai police discovered large stockpiles of chemicals used to make bombs and that led them to a stash by a Lebanese man who had connections to Hezbollah. A month later, on 15 February, three explosions tore through a bustling Bangkok neighbourhood wounding five bystanders, and at another address in Bangkok a Hezbollah operative threw a hand grenade at Thai police. It rebounded and blew his legs off. The Thai police identified those people as being Iranian passport holders and one of them was detained at the city's international airport. Very significantly, that was in our part of the world.

On 21 March, my friend the Chairman of the US House Committee on Homeland Security, Republican Peter King—a congressman from New York—ran a hearing on Iran, Hezbollah and the threat to homeland security, in which he stated:

… top intelligence officials in the United States believe that Hezbollah is the group most capable of flipping its nationwide network of criminal fundraising cells into an operational terror force capable of great violence on orders from its leaders in Lebanon or Iran. In 2009 the Obama Administration said that Hezbollah is the 'most technically capable terrorist group in the world'.

Obviously, that kind of warning applies to Australia as well. Interestingly, with Mr King's use of how the charitable networks can be flipped into operational terrorist groups, the report from the Intelligence and Security Committee notes:

Besides operating a worldwide network of fundraisers, funds are raised through so-called charity funds. Some of these extremist institutions, while not directly connected to Hezbollah, support it in view of their radical Islamist orientation. While some of these funds undoubtedly pay for Hezbollah's military and terrorist operations, other funds enable the group to provide its members with day jobs to drape itself in the veil of legitimacy and to build grassroots support.

The report suggests that these kind of charitable networks, as Congressman King suggests, can be flipped or operating here in Australia, and I must say from my own experience I agree. Again, significantly, on 28 May this year, the Washington Post reported that US and Middle East officials see the thwarted attack by Hezbollah on Azerbaijan as a part of a broader campaign by Iranian assassins and terrorists to kill foreign diplomats in at least seven countries over a span of 13 months. The Washington Post report recounts the famous projected attack on the Saudi ambassador in Washington, half a dozen Israeli diplomats and several other Americans. The report presented to US officials in April outlines links between the attempted assassinations of diplomats by Iranian and Hezbollah officers in five countries—India, Turkey, Thailand, Pakistan and Georgia.

On 10 August this year, the Obama administration placed sanctions on Hezbollah for assisting the Assad regime in Syria. The announcement by the US Treasury directly linked Hezbollah to the actions of the Assad regime, which, as we know, has killed 25,000 of its own people. I ask you one rhetorical question, Mr Deputy Speaker: where are all the demonstrators? Where are Socialist Alternative? Where are the Greens political party? If any Western country were involved in the deaths of this many civilians, they would be out in the streets, causing demonstrations, but there is silence. That points to double standards and hypocrisy. It is not good enough. The US Treasury has said:

Hezbollah’s extensive support to the Syrian government’s violent suppression of the Syrian people exposes the true nature of this terrorist organization and its destabilizing presence in the region.

I am not finished there. As I said at the beginning, on 18 July this year another terrorist attack in Bulgaria wounded 30 people aboard a tourist bus and killed six. Foreign Policy magazine—a very serious magazine of international affairs in the United States and probably the main left-of-centre publication—argues:

… Iran and Hezbollah have crossed a dangerous line with their first strike in Europe in more than 15 years.

I commend this report—its seriousness and its ongoing listing of Hezbollah's External Security Organization. I suggest that, from the reading of my speech and from the identification of the kinds of trends that are happening in other parts of the world and getting closer to Australia—in Thailand and targeting Europe—and with the suggestions by Congressman King that charitable organisations can be flipped for other activities at short notice and the identification by the Obama administration of Hezbollah's deadly intent and capability, this is a threat to Australia too. Therefore the parliamentary committee, in a nonpartisan way, is doing exactly as the parliament intended in recommending these things to the Attorney-General and to the government. I commend the Attorney-General, ASIO and all of the people involved in the continuing, ongoing work in this area.

Debate adjourned.