Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) Australia has had a policy on multiculturalism since 1973; and

(b) Australia's multicultural policy demonstrates our shared values and cultural traditions and complements our national characteristics of equality and a fair go for all;

(2) recognises that:

(a) our diversity:

  (i) makes us a richer, more vibrant and creative country; and

  (ii) brings economic and social benefits and gives us a competitive edge in a globalised world;

(b) multiculturalism:

  (i) is in our best interest and speaks to fairness and inclusion; and

  (ii) enhances respect and support for cultural, religious and linguistic diversity;

(c) we are committed to a just, inclusive and socially cohesive society where everyone can participate in the opportunities our country offers;

(d) promoting understanding and acceptance is important;

(e) racism is harmful to individuals and to the community; and

(f) racist behaviour should not be tolerated in a civil society; and

(3) calls on the Government to reaffirm its commitment to Australia's culturally diverse and socially cohesive society and to condemn those who are actively seeking to incite division.

I am very pleased to move the motion that has been circulated in my name. It is particularly important in the current political climate where we have the Turnbull government introducing legislation into the Senate that will allow more racist speech and where we have a Queensland senator calling for the banning of an entire section of the Australian religious community. It is important in that light that today we recognise the great benefits of Australia's multiculturalism and the harm that racist behaviour causes to individuals and our community.

Moreton is a very diverse mix of multicultural and ethnic communities and religious beliefs. There are large communities of Taiwanese, Chinese, Indians, former Yugoslavs, Pacific Islanders, Somalians, Eritreans, Ethiopians, Sudanese, Rwandans, Filipinos, South Africans, Indigenous Australians, New Zealanders, Fijians, Koreans and Vietnamese to name but a few. My community is richer and more vibrant and creative due to the contribution of our ethnic communities. I am very glad that I am raising my family right in the middle of such a diverse community. My young children see the differences in other Australians and they also see what unites us. And I am grateful that my two young boys are part of that daily version of giving me hope, because imagine seeing the world through the eyes where you only see division. That must be a horrible world to live in and a horrible place to dwell in.

It is a place that the leader of the One Nation political party knows only too well. She gives us a glimpse of that vile place where she vents her hateful and divisive rhetoric. It is so wrong to single out one Australian religious community and have them believe that they are not welcome here. I take this opportunity, publicly in Australia's democratically-elected parliament that represents all Australians, irrespective of their beliefs or lack of belief, to make it very clear that I condemn the words of the leader of the One Nation political party. All Muslims are no more to blame for all terrorist attacks of criminals than are all Catholics to blame for the sexual abuse against children by some evil clergy. The sins of an evil few should never be visited on the innocent many. The hateful words of the One Nation political party's leader who, let's admit, is a professional politician of more than 20-plus years, were uttered in the same week that the Turnbull government introduced legislation to water down the protections against racist hate speech.

I was deputy chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights that presided over the inquiry into freedom of speech. The majority report tabled from that inquiry did not recommend changing the Racial Discrimination Act. There were some amendments recommended for process, but in terms of changing the Racial Discrimination Act, especially section 18C, that was not the recommendation. The human rights inquiry was conducted over 112 days with hearings in every capital city, including Darwin and Hobart. The committee heard from Indigenous and ethnic communities across the depth and breadth of the country. These people sat in front of the committee and told us of the very real harm that racism causes to individuals and their communities—real harm like physical and mental illness, reduction in educational advancement, reduction in job opportunities, enforced isolation and the inability to participate fully in society because they are afraid to contribute.

The rushed bill introduced by the Attorney-General last week, which had a three-hour Senate inquiry, does not reflect the considered majority report of the Liberal-dominated committee. The rushed committee inquiry—which was launched last Friday and did not hear from the Indigenous community—was quite bizarre. So much for a party that professes to believe in free speech in a democratic society. This was a sham of a process. The Liberal government love talking about freedom of speech, but whose freedom and whose speech is important to them? Their actions, sadly, speak much more loudly than their words. If they were truly concerned about Australia's Indigenous and multicultural communities and their concerns, they would immediately dump this rushed proposed change to the Racial Discrimination Act. No good can possibly come from allowing more racist hate speech—and that, sadly, is what the government are attempting to do.

All Australians deserve to feel safe and valued in their own country, whether they were born here or migrated here. The contribution of immigration to the Australian economy is enormous. We know that, so it is incumbent upon those in positions of power to promote understanding and the acceptance of all Australians, whether they were born here or migrated here. It should be abhorrent to all Australians that an Australian politician is singling out a whole community and telling them they are not welcome here. It is un-Australian and goes against the Constitution.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and I reserve my right to speak.

John Alexander (Bennelong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is always a pleasure to speak on motions like this, and I thank my friend the member for Moreton for raising it. It is my great honour to represent Bennelong, the most multicultural electorate in the country. It is home to people from around the world—Chinese, Koreans, Italians, Armenians, Indians, Persians and many, many more. Our suburbs show off this vibrant mix. Eastwood is full of restaurants from across East Asia, and every Wednesday morning the mall is filled with the relaxing movements and music of dozens of people doing tai chi.

Italians first moved to Ryde a few generations ago and, in that time, have stamped their identity on the architecture, the businesses and the schools. Armenians have been coming to the area since common bonds were shared in the aftermath of tragedy in the First World War and have subsequently blossomed. Two of our local councillors come from Armenian stock and the Premier of New South Wales herself grew up locally with her Armenian family.

These unique ethnicities do not live in their own bubble—we all work together, celebrate together and live together. The Lunar New Year celebrations are embraced by both Chinese and Koreans alike and also by tens of thousands of people from across all of Sydney who come to watch the energetic and engaging festivities. Similarly, this May our Indian community will join with the Pakistanis, the Sri Lankans, the Bangladeshis, the Nepalese and Afghanis as they host the inaugural SAFAL Fest, the South Asian Film, Arts and Literature Festival, at Macquarie University. I am particularly proud of this event. It has been put on with the help of funding from the federal government, who contributed some $3,000.

One of my most successful initiatives locally has been the Bennelong Cup. Early in my time as an MP, I visited a local school and saw a high percentage of students from Asian backgrounds. I noticed that there was a divide in the playground between the European and the Asian students. I know personally that nothing fosters relationships like playing sports together, so I instituted the Bennelong Cup schools table tennis initiative, together with help from Hyundai, Andrew Hill of STARStv and the leader of the Australian Asian Association of Bennelong, Hugh Lee. We put table tennis tables in over 40 schools across the electorate and hosted a competition between all of them. The event continues to be a great success. Fast-forward to today, and the Bennelong Cup has just hosted its sixth annual competition, alongside a test match played by teams from eight nations. But the highlight is always the schools competition. Seeing a gymnasium filled with students from all backgrounds competing, playing, laughing and making friends with each other is the true success of this initiative. It is multiculturalism at work, fostering relationships—attitudes that will serve these students well throughout their lives.

While Bennelong shows multiculturalism's success in microcosm, it is also true to say that Australia is the most successful multicultural society in the world. Our achievements as a nation can be attributed to the contributions of more than 300 different ancestries, from the First Australians to the newest arrivals. Almost half of our current population either were born overseas or have at least one parent who was born overseas. Australia has a rich history of migrants contributing to our social and economic fabric. Over time, the coming together of many peoples has helped build our infrastructure, enliven our communities, enhance our cultural experiences, increase opportunities and, most significantly, expand the way we engage with the world. Only together, through shared values, rights and responsibilities, have we built this modern and prosperous Australia. Our values unite us. They are based on respect, equality and freedom. We recognise the importance of integration, mutual respect and mutual responsibility, where everyone has the opportunity to contribute to and benefit from our prosperity.

Thank you again, member for Moreton. I wholeheartedly agree with every line of your motion. Our community's strength is in its diversity. I am immensely proud of Bennelong, the diverse heritage of local residents and, most importantly, the harmonious way in which we have all integrated with each other. We have taken the best of each culture and grown into a unique and exciting community. This fusion makes this area of Sydney great and it is what makes me so proud to be its MP.

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Moreton for putting this very important private member's motion to the House for debate. Multiculturalism is the foundation of modern Australian society. Although this motion refers to Australian having had a multiculturalism policy since 1973, the truth is that Australia began becoming a multicultural society long before that. We can go back to the First Fleet, to Muslims from Afghanistan and to the Chinese of the gold rush period, not to mention the migration of people from the United Kingdom and Ireland, but it was Arthur Calwell's ambitious, expansive migration policy of the late 1940s, which sourced migrants from war-torn Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States, that sowed the foundation for modern multicultural Australia. With the pronouncement that, 'We cannot hold this continent with 7½ million people,' Calwell and his contemporaries set about changing the cultural face of Australian society in the pursuit of nation-building and prosperity. It is no coincidence that Calwell has been referred to as the 'father of multiculturalism', a reference not often countenanced in the history of multiculturalism.

The election of the Whitlam government in 1972 led to the official formation and adoption of a policy that sought to effect and implement the integration of migrant Australia. Multiculturalism recognised the strength of our cultural diversity. It recognised that not only migrants' labour but also their cultural inheritance were vital nation-building resources for our prosperity. As a policy, multiculturalism created a socially and culturally inclusive society in making us a richer and more vibrant nation, and in providing a fair go for all underpinned by the principles of access and equity in service delivery. The key piece of establishing legislation was the Racial Discrimination Act, a legal framework that ensured the protection of people's rights and their dignity.

By and large, multicultural policy has enjoyed bipartisanship at both state and federal levels, but this has not always been the case. We have, over recent years, endured debates that called for multiculturalism to be abandoned because it was seen as divisive and detrimental to Australia. Nothing is further from the truth. Without multiculturalism, Australia's migrant society would not have achieved the social cohesion we have, which has enabled us to prosper as a success story of Australian nationhood. I know the Prime Minister believes this also, and I want to commend him for his multicultural statement promoting inclusion and integration, which he launched last week. But I want to ask him why he has sought to undermine this statement by moving to amend section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. By weakening 18C, the Turnbull government is sending mixed signals: on the one hand, it supports multiculturalism; on the other hand, it does not support the very tools needed to protect and ensure our social cohesion.

The second coming of One Nation and the formation of other conservative groups mean that debate around these very important issues, which are ultimately about our national identity, remains timely and critical. Pauline Hanson is the same crude voice today as she was 20 years ago. Her current target is Muslim Australians, and she goes as far as saying, 'Islam is a disease. We need to vaccinate ourselves against that.' Is this not insulting and humiliating? It sure is offensive and it is a disgraceful display of small-mindedness and opportunism. I disagree with the Prime Minister: there is nothing sophisticated about Pauline Hanson mark 2. She remains as bigoted, unsophisticated and crass as she has always been. It is Muslims today; 20 years ago it was Asians. I am sure that 50 years ago it would have been Europeans, my family and I included. Pauline Hanson threatens our national security. The Prime Minister is right to point this out. Her views undermine our social cohesion. She and others like her use the pretext of freedom of speech to promote verbal violence, and as such she has to be held to account.

George Zangalis is an Australian, a unionist, chair of 3ZZZ community radio and one of the 'unwanted Australians'. He has spent most of his life fighting racist views such as those espoused by Pauline Hanson. He says:

It took a long time of sustained efforts to legislate against racism and enshrine multiculturalism as the glue that binds the nation together. The Turnbull Government's amendments strike at the very heart of such protection.

Under threat is not nor has it been freedom of speech, especially for those who yield power and cry the loudest for taking the guts out of 18C but protection against racism for minorities that 18C currently provides.

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Happy birthday, Mr Deputy Speaker Buchholz!

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member.

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is my pleasure to rise to speak on this private member's motion on multiculturalism. I would like to thank my good friend the member for Moreton for bringing this motion to the House, because I think it is very important that we do, on a regular basis, recognise the value of our multicultural society. As the proud son of Dutch migrant parents, it is heartening to me to reflect on and boast about our success to the rest of the world. All Australians can be rightly proud of our strong and successful multicultural society.

The story of Australia began in the distant past with our Indigenous population and heritage. It grew with the establishment of the institutions of the British Empire and continues today with people from lands far and wide. Since 1945 we have seen more than 7.5 million people migrate to Australia, and around 45 per cent of Australians today were either born overseas or have at least one parent who was. From the First Australians to the newest arrivals, our achievements as a nation can be contributed to more than 300 different ancestries and heritages that we identify in the Australian community today.

Last week the Prime Minister released the coalition's 2017 multicultural statement. The release of this statement was a timely renewal of our commitment to a strong, prosperous multicultural Australia. In part this was recognised through the annual Harmony Day celebrations, but I know, as a member who represents a community with some 217 different cultural backgrounds, that every single day in our communities right around Australia many Australians from all walks of life work together to ensure that we have a harmonious society.

We should be very proud of this most successful multicultural society in the world, where more than 85 per cent of Australians agree that multiculturalism is good for our country. Our rich history of migrants has contributed to our social and economic fabric, with almost half our current population, as I said earlier, born overseas. Over time, the coming together of many peoples has helped build our infrastructure, enliven our communities, enhance our cultural experiences, increase our opportunities and, most significantly, expand the way we see and engage with the world. It is only together, through these shared values, rights and responsibilities, that we have built this modern and prosperous country. Our values unite us. They are based on respect, equality and freedom. We recognise the importance of integration, mutual respect and mutual responsibility, where everyone has the opportunity to contribute to and benefit from our prosperity. It is important that we recognise that our diversity and harmony are underpinned by the security of our nation. We respond to threats to our way of life by continuing to invest in counterterrorism, strong borders and a strong national security framework. It is important that we continue to recognise that we cannot take our harmony and prosperity for granted.

Through the multicultural statement, the government continues to promote the principles of mutual respect, denouncing racial hatred and discrimination as incompatible with Australian society and culture. Migrants to Australia have come here in search of new opportunities and a better life. I frequently have those discussions with members of my community. While English is, and will remain, our national language and is a critical tool for migrant integration, our multilingual workforce is giving Australian businesses new horizons and boosting the opportunities to take skills in this country overseas. The most commonly spoken languages in Australia include Mandarin, Italian, Arabic, Cantonese, Greek, Vietnamese, Filipino, Spanish and Hindi. We should be very proud of the tremendous work that we do in this country to welcome those from across the seas and we should continue to focus on that objective.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for that contribution. The question is that the motion be agreed to. I give the call to the honourable member for Hindmarsh.

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and may I wish you a happy birthday as well.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Hindmarsh as well. And thank you, Bert, for that!

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Moreton for bringing such an important motion to the House, especially in the current political climate. Multiculturalism can mean many different things to different people, but to me it describes the reality of our nation. We are a nation made up of people from every corner of the world speaking every language you could possibly think of. In this place alone, if you scratch the surface, you will find that just in this chamber we have the member for Forde, with the name van Manen; the member for Caldwell, with the name Vamvakinou; and me, the member for Hindmarsh, with the name Georganas. We are just three of the many members in this House from diverse backgrounds, and that is something we should be very proud of. I think there would be very few countries around the world where you could arrive as a migrant with very little skill in English and have your children become members of parliament. It is something very special that we should cherish in this nation, because it shows what an egalitarian nation we are, and it shows that the cohesiveness of multiculturalism has worked very well for this nation and will continue to work well for years to come.

To others, multiculturalism is a policy that was introduced by the Whitlam Labor government, and it has been maintained by consecutive governments of different political persuasions and strengthened over time. In fact, it is precisely the bipartisan approach of supporting multiculturalism that has ensured its success and the unique success stories that we hear in our communities. Recently we have seen some attacks on multiculturalism. These elements within our society are very few but unfortunately very loud, and the noise that comes from these very few elements is scary because it brings uncertainty to this wonderful nation where we have had cohesiveness for many years.

When you look at this nation you see people from every corner of the world, as the previous speakers in this debate have spoken about. Every language that you can possibly think of is spoken in this nation. That is because people of different communities are not trying to overwhelm one another with their particular culture, language or traditions. It is about bringing the best of every culture from the world to this nation and contributing to this wonderful country of Australia, and that is why it has worked so well.

I have great pleasure in attending citizenship ceremonies. Nothing gives me more pleasure than going and seeing the joy on people's faces when they commit and affirm to our nation, which means that their future is here in this country—and, even more importantly, not just their future but their children's future and their children's children's future. You see the success stories: not just success stories of businesses, although there have been many of them, but success stories in every walk of life. Just the fact that a family can come here from a war-torn country, with absolutely no hope and certainly not being able to fulfil any of the dreams that they may have had in their home country, and fulfil some of those dreams is such a special thing. It is a special story that we have, and we are an absolute world example of living in harmony, living together and sharing those good things that we bring to this nation.

If you have a look around the world, there is no other country that is doing it better than we are. You look at the conflicts around the world and the different religious and tribal divisions. One of the reasons we have done it so well here is that we are an inclusive nation and we bring people in. We encourage people to become citizens as quickly as possible when they are here. We encourage people to participate and become part of our community, and all of this is through that fabric that we call multiculturalism.

As I said, it is a policy that was introduced in 1973, but the reality is that multicultural Australia has existed for many, many years. In South Australia, for example, we have the Afghani camel people who came over and opened up the centre of Australia. Their descendants still live in my electorate, with names like Abdullah and Halimah. These are people still within the western suburbs of Hindmarsh whose great-great-grandparents came from different parts of the world. So this motion is important, and we should call for the reaffirmation of these policies.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his contribution and offer that 'Buchholz' has strong German heritage.

George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker Buchholz, let me wish you a happy birthday. I will not go any further or I will make disparaging remarks about the chair! I will tell it to you later.

For more than 200 years, Australia's history and culture have been enriched by waves of immigration. People from many countries around the world came here to share in the freedoms and opportunities that this blessed nation provides. The Italians, the Greeks, the Germans and many others joined the predominantly English, Irish and Indigenous Australians and built one of the most modern and successful Western societies in the world. In the process, a national identity and a national culture was formed that we all know and understand, even though sometimes it is difficult to define.

A multicultural society is one that embraces a number of minority cultures, and multiculturalism is the belief that such a society benefits by maintaining more than one culture within its structure. For more than 200 years, Australia was that country. It embraced a number of minority cultures, and that worked well when those ethnic and national minorities embraced the majority culture, the Australian culture. But I am sad to say I do not believe that is any longer the case. We now have isolated immigrant enclaves and cultural enclaves that do not embrace the dominant Australian culture. They are aided and abetted by the politically correct, the elite and the socialist left, who massage their own guilt complex by rejecting, denigrating and persecuting the majority Australian culture. Their pursuit of equality focuses on tearing everyone down to the lowest common denominator. How can Australia be a successful multicultural society when it harbours enclaves that do not embrace the major culture of the country in which they reside, much less the culture of other minorities?

All human races, nationalities and ethnicities that we find in Australia today are descended from immigrants, and that even includes the nation's first people, who were the first immigrants from across the world. But we cannot call ourselves a successful multicultural society, because one ethnic group is openly reviled, despised and denigrated by the elite, the politically correct, the law, the media and even the Human Rights Commission. Institutionalised cultural suppression does exist in this country today, not to suppress a minority culture but to elevate minority cultures above the majority. Our culture is being oppressed and supplanted by a culture that is so at odds with its hosts that it hates all that the host country and its people stand for, and I talk of radical Islam.

If we were a truly multicultural society—a society that accepts different cultural practices—you might expect the government to step in when school students refuse to accept the cultural practices of others. When male students at Hurstville Boys Campus of the Georges River College refused to shake the hands of women handing out awards, the New South Wales government did not step in. It supported the misogynistic stance of the students. Australian culture, which is men and women being equal, was not accepted by the students. It was deemed unacceptable and had to be denied.

In what definition of multiculturalism would it be acceptable for an immigrant, an ethnic minority or anyone for that matter to defy the cultural practices of the host country? Where is the benefit to society in having violent ethnic gangs creating havoc in the central business district of a major capital city in this country? Where is the benefit to society in having enclaves where a separate community recreates a mini country within its own culture, with its own culture and language, that isolates itself from the rest of the country and attacks outsiders should they dare to set foot on its so-called foreign soil? That is not the warm and fuzzy peace-and-love society that this motion would have us believe multiculturalism to be.

I note this motion calls on the government to condemn those who are actively seeking to incite division. As a member of the government, I am very happy to condemn those who actively seek to incite division. I condemn those who divide the country by isolating themselves and trying to create alternative countries within Australia. I condemn those who divide the country by promoting foreign legal systems, such as sharia law, and creating alternative laws and alternative legal systems. I condemn those who divide the country by not just refusing to participate in Australia's cultural norms but also demanding the rest of the country give up their own cultural norms.

Multiculturalism in Australia was a good thing, but it failed the minute we failed to stand up for the rights of our own culture. That is why I am now against multiculturalism. Our nation was stronger with one culture—a culture we were willing to defend and a culture that had been enriched by people from other lands and other cultures and by people and cultures that were aligned with our own values. If we continue to supplant our culture with one opposed to it, everything will fail. (Time expired)

Tim Hammond (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support this motion. I realise that when people refer to ethnically diverse communities in Australia perhaps not that many might immediately think of my home electorate of the federal seat of Perth. But I can assure you that there are very strong migrant communities all throughout my electorate that have added immeasurably to the vibrancy of our local community and have done so for decades, if not hundreds of years. I immediately think of the Glendi Greek Festival that I attended late last year in Northbridge, the Chinese New Year parade, the Vietnamese community's amazing dinners that I am invited to, the Macedonian community coming together to build a new church in North Perth, the Nepalese community fundraiser I went to last year or the WA Italian Club reception only a few weeks ago.

From that, I suspect you get the impression quite clearly and quite rightly that the federal seat of Perth, indeed, is an incredibly vibrant ethnic community. How dull would life be without these wonderful events? So I pay tribute to migrant and ethnic communities in Perth and thank them for the contribution they have made not just to caring for each other but also to the richness, vibrancy and diversity of Perth more broadly.

Tuesday last week was Harmony Day—a day when the nation chooses to celebrate our diversity. By way of a history lesson, Harmony Day was invented by John Howard to try to mainstream politics around migrant communities for two key reasons. He did this, firstly, in an attempt to mitigate the appeal of Pauline Hanson 1.0. Secondly, he wanted to wrest migrants' votes off the Labor Party by presenting the Liberal Party as the friend of diversity. Certainly the Liberal Party under John Howard had a degree of success on both counts, although, sadly, both now appear to have fallen away. Indeed, the Liberal Party, egged on by hard-right conservatives, are now again seeking to weaken race hate laws. They also now have an appeasement policy towards Pauline Hanson 2.0—particularly if the recent Western Australian experience is anything to go by.

Listening to the Prime Minister last week, his Orwellian newspeak that I suspect even he had difficulty believing, insisting that weakening section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act was actually strengthening it, was, with respect, pathetic. War is peace, ignorance is strength, freedom is slavery and, now, racism is diversity—I mean, please! The fact that the Prime Minister introduced this short-sighted, divisive amendment on Harmony Day just adds insult to injury. I do not know what is worse—if he did not realise it was Harmony Day or if he knew and did it anyway.

Let's get real, though. I suspect the Prime Minister actually wants this bill to fail in the Senate. I think he lost a vote in his own cabinet and wants to kill off the bill before it reaches the House. Certainly the member for Bennelong will not want to have to vote for the bill—perceptions of racism, after all, are part of what lost the Liberals the seat in 2007—and nor will the members for Reid, Banks and Chisholm with their ethnically diverse electorates and wafer-thin margins. I would say to those honourable members: be very, very careful what you wish for. For every racist and divisive vote the Liberal Party tries to court, there is a multitude of anti-racist Australians whose support you will lose. I would say this to the Prime Minister: you must no longer have an attitude of tolerance and appeasement towards the bigots in your party's far-right ranks. People are starting to notice.

I am an Anglo-Saxon, white male who has never, ever had to fall victim to racism or prejudice. But, in a sense, that is the point. The issues that confront our migrant communities do not just impact upon those communities; they affect us all. Racism, wherever it occurs, does not just harm its direct victims; rather, it demeans us all. For so long as we tolerate the notion that, in order to give bigots the right to exercise their so-called freedom of speech in a way that risks those who are vulnerable in our community, those ethnic communities who have had to work so hard to overcome perceptions of racism must simply fall back into a category where they are potentially maligned does us as a community and society no good at all. I will never stop calling out racism when I see it, and I see it in the eyes of the rich white men proposing these changes to 18C. (Time expired)

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

Since the end of World War II, approximately eight million people have migrated to Australia. They have done so for many reasons. They have done it to escape poverty. They have done it for peace and security. They have done so for the economic opportunities that Australia provides. They have done so for our beautiful weather, climate and way of life. But, most of all, those people who have migrated to Australia have done so for freedom. Freedom has been above all those other reasons for why people have migrated to Australia. They have done so to ensure that they and their children do not have to tolerate some of the totalitarian regimes where they have come from. Therefore, when freedom is threatened in Australia, it should be the multicultural groups in our country that are first to rally to freedom's defence.

What we have seen recently with the decisions of the Australian Human Rights Commission, the actions they have taken and the contact they have engaged in is a bureaucracy that is simply drunk with power—power given to them by the provisions in 18C. We should not have in this country a situation where a cartoonist can be called before a government bureaucracy to explain himself. We should not have had the 18C shakedown where young students who were denied access to a computer lab because of their race and ethnic identity raised it as an issue, accusing the university of segregation, were hauled before the courts of this country. When that happens, it should be the ethnic groups in this country that stand up and say: 'This is wrong. This is an erosion of our freedom.' That is why the government is making very modest changes to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

What I find appalling—and this is something the motion calls for, to condemn those that actively seek to incite division—is the Labor Party's conduct. It is the Labor Party—we just heard it from a member of the opposition—saying that those who want to change 18C are somehow inciting racial intolerance. I say it is the other way around. It is those who are making those comments who are the ones inciting racial intolerance in this nation. We should all be able to get together as a parliament and say, 'What happened to the artist Bill Leak should never, ever happen again in this country.' Surely that is something we can all be united on. But instead the Labor Party are using that as an opportunity to play divisive ethnic politics. This is contrary to everything that our country stands for. The changes to 18C are modest and they are needed because of the examples of Bill Leak and the QUT students' case.

When it comes to multiculturalism, we have been a very successful nation over many years—probably the most successful multicultural nation anywhere in the world. But there are problems starting to occur. When we see ethnic crime gangs and the crime increase in Victoria, we need to admit that there are problems starting to occur. When we see young Australians brought up in this country going to fight for Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and taking up arms against Australian troops, we need to see that there are problems occurring. When we see issues of forced marriage, the subjugation of women and people saying it is okay to refuse to shake hands with a woman—these are cracks in the wonderful multicultural society we have.

Rather than ignore these issues or bury our head in the sand and say there are no problems, it is up to responsible members of this parliament on both sides to say that there are issues, to say that we need to concentrate on the things that unite us, rather than the things that divide us. If we do not call these things out, there will be other politicians who will come into this place who will say far more radical things, and they will be the ones attracting popular support. (Time expired)

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for the debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.