Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to express my concern about and to condemn the violent protests in Sydney's CBD last weekend. To see young children holding up signs calling for the beheading of people and to see attacks against our police force is completely unacceptable in our democracy, for any reason. I am also greatly concerned of the reports last week that a Sydney sheikh has been charged with two accounts of accessory after the fact for the crime of female genital mutilation.

This follows the arrest of three people who were charged over an allegation of genital mutilation of two young Australian girls aged just six and seven. This is not an isolated case. The Medical Journal of Australia has recently reported that the Melbourne women's hospital alone is reporting between 600 to 700 young Australian women annually who have been victims of the barbaric and criminal practice of genital mutilation.

I am also greatly concerned about recent court findings that terrorists have planned to attack the Holsworthy army base to commit mass murder. Combined, these represent a failure of our nation's immigration policies and give us cause to think about what type of Australia we want to leave for our children and grandchildren. John Howard was right when he said, 'We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.' We will reap what we say. A letter published in today's Sydney Morning Herald, written by Lloyd Brand of Belmore, sums up the thoughts of many. He writes:

I am a Muslim. I was mortified at the rabble who turned up at the protest last Saturday. If these people wish to follow their extreme view of Islam, I suggest they move to countries where these views are enforced, and let's see how they fare. I do not think they would last too long once the freedoms they enjoy in this country are stripped from them.

Perhaps we need to look at our policies. Our policies of migration have made us the great nation we are today, but perhaps now is the time to review our Australian statements of values that all migrants are required to sign. Religious extremists espousing violence are completely contrary to our Australian way of life, and female genital mutilation is not a multicultural practice; it is a barbaric crime. I congratulate Smaier Dandan of the Lebanese Muslim Association for his thoughtful comments. He said that his community values religious freedom in Australia, he rejects calls for extremism and he calls for no further rallies take place.

If we are to avoid radicalisation of migrants we need to make sure we are building an inclusive society. We need to ensure that our migrants in Australia enjoy the same economic opportunities as the migrants who came to Australia in the fifties, sixties and early seventies. And we need to consider how the current settings of our Trade Practices Act are working to deny economic opportunities to migrants. Consider the report in 1999 by the Joint Select Committee on the Retailing Sector. It said:

Over the past twenty years or so, Australia has seen the demise of hundreds of small grocery stores, butchers, bakers, florists, greengrocers, pharmacists, newsagents, liquor outlets and other small retailers as a direct result of the continuous expansion of major supermarket chains and major speciality retailers, often subsidiaries of the same conglomerate.

Thus, the market is heavily concentrated and oligopolistic in nature, where a small number of major—

powers—

have a significant degree of economic influence or market power. This has placed significant pressures on small and independent retailers …

Not only is economic survival at stake, but so too the health and well-being of many small retailers, brought about by longer working hours and stressful dealings with the ‘big end of town’.

If we continue to have policies that protect our grocery duopoly from competition—ones that give them special privileges and rights and thereby deny today's economic migrants the same economic opportunity to open their small businesses as generations of migrants had in the past—we will reap what we sow.