Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

There can be no doubt that, in our country, far-Right extremism is a real and growing problem. There are some out there who want to pretend that this is just an irrelevancy, that it's really not an issue and that people are silly to be getting upset about it, but it is a real and growing problem. As Senator Faruqi said, an Australian was, unfortunately, the perpetrator of the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand, not too long ago. We see Neo-Nazi rallies and gatherings in our own country all too often and with growing crowds, increasingly organised over social media. As Senator Carr stated, ASIO, in evidence to Senate estimates committees, has advised that about 40 per cent of their work now is involved in dealing with far-Right extremism, and that rate is growing.

This growth of far-Right extremism, very sadly, is heavily targeted at some of the most vulnerable communities in our country: our First Nations people, migrants, Muslims—anyone who doesn't fit a certain stereotype propagated by these far-Right groups. And, of course, while those vulnerable groups bear the brunt of this far-Right extremism, in a way that I think many people can't possibly understand if they haven't experienced it themselves, this real and growing form of extremism in our country is a risk to all of us. It is a genuine risk to lives and it is a risk to Australia's values, our support for democracy, our support for a fair go for everyone in our country and our support for making sure that everyone is looked after in our country. That's why we need to take this seriously. That's why all of us in this parliament, regardless of our party and regardless of where we come from, need to treat this seriously and tackle it. It is extremely disappointing that we see over and over again this government not taking this risk seriously.

For some time now, we've seen what I've described as 'rogue' backbenchers of this government—in particular, people like Mr Kelly and Mr Christensen—flirting day and night with extreme Right groups and pushing their views, usually sourced from the United States right-wing groups, into the Australian population through their heavily subscribed social media channels. And, over and over again, we have seen the Prime Minister and other senior ministers of this government fail to take action and rein them in. It's even worse when it reaches the level of the Deputy Prime Minister of this country, who recently used—not just echoed, but used—an infamous far-Right slogan from the United States: 'All lives matter'. He tried to treat it as a joke. He tried to say it wasn't serious. He tried to say it was just a statement of the obvious. But he very well knows that, as does every member of this government, that's a far Right slogan used for a reason: to enrage and stir up that form of extremism that we are seeing increasingly in the US and in our own country. It is a problem that, from backbenchers to the second highest office in the land, we are seeing members of this government propagate these views and support them, or, at the very least, fail to rein them in.

The response that is usually given, and probably will be given in this debate, when members of the opposition and others point out the seriousness of this is that everyone has got a right to an opinion and to free speech and we should defend it. Well, the members opposite need to remember that there has never, in this country, been an unrestricted right to free speech. With speech, comes responsibility. We have always had limitations on free speech, whether it be defamation laws, whether it be about restricting people from spreading terrorist ideology or whether it be about companies not being able to mislead consumers. With speech comes responsibility, and it's about time this government took that seriously and took the growing risk of far Right extremism seriously too.