Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today is the second anniversary of the Christchurch massacre. I vividly recall the horror of that day, the pain and the loss of families, and the shared grief of New Zealand and Australia. To our eternal shame, the murderer was an Australian. The brutality, the inhumanity, stunned the world—an atrocity in any place, but unspeakably so in a place of worship and reflection.

It also struck many Australians that those who were murdered were, just like our community, people from all backgrounds: locals, students, immigrants and visitors. Yesterday in Victoria was the Islamic Council's mosque open day. I visited a mosque in Dandenong. It was wonderful to see the whole community welcomed—Australians in all their diversity. Multicultural Australia is modern Australia.

It was an act of terror that was committed, but to suggest it was a lone act of terror would insult the memory of those who died. It was fuelled by hate speech and the noxious far-Right political ideology of white supremacism. The then Leader of the Opposition spoke powerfully:

Not all right wing extremist hate speech ends in right wing extremist violence. But all right wing extremist violence begins with right wing extremist hate speech.

Words have consequences and plant the seeds for violence. Right-wing extremism is still on the rise in Australia, as it is around the world, and the government must do much more to act on right-wing extremism and hate speech and make sure that such an atrocity can never happen here.