House debates

Monday, 12 February 2024

Statements by Members

Racism

1:50 pm

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

We are seeing shades of 1930s Germany emerge in Australia. Jewish Australians have received death threats. Families are in hiding. Jewish businesses and the jobs they support are at risk. Jewish healthcare professionals are being vilified. Hateful vandalism is in our suburbs. Jewish Australians feel like aliens in their own land. Now we see the public release of private details of Jewish Australians. This behaviour is disgusting. Antisemitism is disgusting. It must stop.

Moblike behaviour has no place in Australia, but the mob has been whipped up by people who should know better. The tragedy within a tragedy that is the Israel-Palestinian conflict has been weaponised by performative political players who see this as a mass recruitment tool. The movement behind this is fast losing its integrity. They apply a never-ending string of purity tests to anyone who remotely disagrees with them, mocking, abusing and, now, doxing them.

This deep and complicated conflict does not submit to being a morality tail. Manage your moral outrage, switch on your moral compass and understand that your locus of control is not there but here. Manage your distress in functional, rather than dysfunctional ways, that do not compromise the wellbeing and safety of our fellow Australians.