James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Cyber Security) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a brief contribution on the tabling of this report. I'd like to focus my contribution on one of the listings in particular of those eight terrorist organisations, although I support the minister's decision to list and relist all of those organisations. I am referring to the listing in its entirety of Hamas as a terrorist organisation.

The history of this issue is that Hamas’ al-Qassam Brigades were initially listed in November 2003 and have been repeatedly relisted by ministers for home affairs or their equivalents under governments of both persuasions until 4 August 2021. In the PJCIS's last review of that listing, under my chairmanship, we recommended that the evidence was now overwhelmingly clear that the al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas was not a discrete and separate entity to the rest of Hamas but that the entirety of Hamas was responsible, morally, ethically, legally and financially, for the terrorist activities that the al-Qassam Brigades engage in and that, in particular, the so-called 'civilian' leadership of Hamas was, at the very least, guilty of many instances of incitement to violence that meet the definition under the act required. So we recommended for the first time that the government consider broadening that listing to cover Hamas in its entirety, and I'm very pleased that the then Minister for Home Affairs, Ms Andrews, in October 2021, received our report and then, in February 2022, agreed to the committee's recommendation and proceeded to list the organisation in its entirety.

Under the leadership of my colleague in the other place, Mr Khalil, the new committee of the PJCIS has considered that listing and has reaffirmed and supported the minister's decision to list Hamas in its entirety. I want to thank the Labor members of the committee for their support of this listing. This is a very important bipartisan initiative to recognise that all of Hamas is responsible for its violent crimes around the world, and should be held so under our law.