Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the senator for her question. Australia is privileged to have a rich multicultural society, and values of tolerance and respect are at the core of who we are. Australians fought and died in the fight against fascist ideologies, including Nazism, that are built on antisemitism and on prejudice. Extremist views like Nazism must be met with uncompromising condemnation.

The Nazi rally at the weekend was appalling and unacceptable and has no place in Australia. Sadly, it comes at a time when we have seen an increase in antisemitism more broadly. Nazism and fascism cannot be normalised and they cannot be defended on grounds of freedom of speech because they inflict real and direct harm and they are in direct opposition to liberal democracy. They are ideologies that work by dehumanising—by singling out people as outsiders and second-class citizens who are not deserving of the protections and dignities afforded to full members of the community. This is what the Nazis did. Nazism and fascism dehumanised Jews, gays, people with disabilities, Slavs, Roma, people of colour as well as people of different political views, labelling whole groups of people as subhuman.

This reminds us again why hate speech is so dangerous. Hatred in speech led to hatred in deed, with six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, and millions more declared subhuman were also killed by the Nazis. History shows that genocides, mass atrocities, systemic forms of enslavement and ill-treatment have been fuelled by hate speech, which dehumanises and blames victims. Anyone who refuses to denounce Nazism or other extremist ideologies has not learned the lessons of history. All of us must always stand against those whose rhetoric undermines our diversity, our tolerance and our values.