Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

Unlike the previous speaker, I actually thank Senator Scarr for raising this important matter in such a timely manner. And it's due to the lack of guts, I should say, from the government, who won't call it out. That's why there are so many problems around the world, especially in Britain, at the moment, with this organisation spreading its tentacles around the world. By any reasonable measure, Hizb ut-Tahrir is an extremist terrorist organisation with goals completely out of step with Australian values. The best example of this is the infamous video which came to light in April 2017 depicting members of this group endorsing husbands beating their wives into obedience and submission. That's more than a simple cultural difference. It's an endorsement of a violent act, illegal in any Australian jurisdiction. Let's hope it doesn't become compulsory if they ever get control of our parliaments.

There are now 813,000 Muslims in Australia—3.2 per cent of the population. But I must add, in no way am I saying that law-abiding people of the Muslim faith are terrorists or associated with Hizb ut-Tahrir. But Hizb ut-Tahrir have gone much further in recent times. They have celebrated the murder of more than a thousand Israelis on 7 October last year. They promote the genocide of Israelis and Jewish people across the world.

Thanks to the profound weakness of this Labor government, they are inciting gullible and ignorant university students to celebrate murder and genocide as well. This mob calls for the establishment of a global caliphate ruled by sharia law—again, completely incompatible with Australian values and our Constitution. Go and ask Britain how it's working for them. Muslim countries like Indonesia, Turkey, Bangladesh and Pakistan have banned it, as have most Arab nations. Even they can see the danger that this group represents.

Why is Australia so blind to the threat posed by this mob and others that promote Political Islam? Last month, a story in the Age revealed the Australian Taxation Office had given charity status to an organisation led by a Hizb ut-Tahrir member. Have we given tax breaks for terrorism funding? This week, we heard news of a Muslim political bloc being formed to target Western Sydney seats held by Labor ministers in order to force the ALP to recognise the terrorist state of Palestine. They've announced candidates and, no doubt, they will leverage the high number of Muslims living in those electorates.

In fact, two of those electorates, Blaxland and Watson, I mentioned in a previous speech in 2017 for their high Muslim populations. I said that Labor's dependence on the Muslim vote was frightening. As we can see, Labor today is hopelessly compromised on an issue that Australia can do absolutely nothing to change: the conflict between Israel and the terrorists seeking to destroy it. I've been warning Australians about this for years. In my first speech in the Senate, in 2016, I warned that Islam does not support democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly nor, especially, the separation of church and state. I said Islam supports a theocracy. I said it doesn't separate religion from politics. I said it may be a religion, but it's also much more than that. It has a global political agenda and a system that dictates and regulates every aspect of a Muslim's life. It is a system they plan to impose on all of us. I warned that we were importing Islamic extremism that had led to the Australian tragedies like the Lindt Cafe siege, the murder of Curtis Cheng and the stabbing of two police officers in Melbourne.

At the time, we were also exporting Islamic extremism, with radicalised Australians rushing to Iraq to join the maniacs in Islamic State. Pictures of an Australian child holding a severed head shamed our nation and appalled the civilised world. Equally appalling to many Australians is the appeasement and coddling of Islam while the majority religion in our country, Christianity, is routinely demonised and persecuted. 'We can't offend the Muslims,' say the proponents of multiculturalism, but Christians are fair game. I have repeatedly warned Australians about the dangers of allowing unrestricted migration of people from countries where this ideology is dominant. Political Islam has no place in Australia, and everyone in this parliament has an obligation to kick it out.

This parliament has no legitimacy if it does not stand up to Political Islam. This parliament has a constitutional, moral obligation to reject, resist and outlaw any movement which seeks to overthrow our democracy and fundamentally change our way of life. A good start would be by listing Hizb ut-Tahrir for what it is: a terrorist organisation. (Time expired)