Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Some people claim that Australia is a racist country, that there is something inherently racist in the Australian character. They point to the recent election of political parties and candidates with an overtly racist, bigoted and Islamophobic agenda. They point to racist abuse in the workplaces, on the streets of their neighbourhoods and on buses and trams, where almost half of this abuse occurs. They point to survey data that shows that one in five people living in Australia, or around 4.6 million people, have been the target of racial discrimination in the past year, and that show that nearly half of all Australian residents from diverse cultural backgrounds have experienced racism at some time in their life. They point to our history of dispossession and the lie of terra nullius. They point to the White Australia policy and the enshrined commitment to racial purity. They use these claims to justify that Australia is a racist nation. Let me be clear: that is not a view that I hold. Of course, I do remember being called a greasy wog when I was at school and, while it did not happen often and not nearly as often as in my parents' generation, those words still stung, but they were words rooted in ignorance and were usually made by kids who did not know better.

I am personally comforted by the fact that most Australians have a really positive view and experience of multiculturalism. They see it as a fundamental part of the Australian nation. There is lots of evidence to back up this claim. The Scanlon Foundation surveys on social cohesion have found a consistently high level of agreement on the proposition that multiculturalism has been good for Australia. Eighty-four per cent of Australians in 2013 supported that proposition, with support increasing to 86 per cent in 2015. Most Australians think that multiculturalism has been good for the Australian nation.

Of course, racism is not unique to Australia. Right throughout history at various times people across the world have been socially isolated, they have been marginalised, they have been incarcerated—they have been executed!—simply on the grounds of race. You need only to look at what is going on in the US right now with the US presidential election, where that repulsive creep Donald Trump effectively won the US Republican nomination on a platform of building a wall to keep out Mexican immigrants and banning Muslim immigration. So, rather than getting into a debate about the character of the Australian nation, let's just accept that racism is a problem here in Australia just as it is right around the world and, because it is hateful and because it damages people, we need to do everything we can to stamp it out. That is especially true for those of us in this place.

But to tackle it we need to understand it. It is my view that the people who vote for parties and candidates in this place who seek to blame others—whether they be Muslims, Asians or Indigenous people—for the problems they face do not do it simply because they are racist. I think their decision is rooted in part in the uncertainty that comes with rapid social and economic change. People right around the country are concerned about their future. They are rightly concerned. They face job uncertainty. We have an economy in transition. We have increasing digitisation and automation. Even with those people who do have a job we have seen stagnant wage growth while costs of living continue to grow. For many of them the aspiration of home ownership is out of reach, and they see no way out. They see rising inequality, where the gap between the top and the bottom continues to grow. When I think about the changing nature of work, I do worry about the disappearance of jobs that have helped keep my family fed and clothed since my parents arrived from Italy in that great wave of postwar migration. They were honest jobs in factories, manufacturing, trades and small business. These same people see governments that have got their priorities all wrong. They see governments that take massive donations from corporations. They see decisions being made to advance the cause of special interests. They see decisions for the big end of town.

But that is not the whole story. We do need to accept that at least some of the people who support these parties, even in small numbers, do hold expressly racist views. So the question for us is: how do we respond, particularly when those views are ventilated in this parliament and transmitted right across the nation? Some people say we should ignore those hateful and bigoted voices within our parliament; that simply to respond would give those hateful voices more power. I think it is an argument that ignores the reality that these people already have power. These candidates and parties have been elected to the parliament. They occupy an important place here in the parliament, some of them on the crossbench, and they already receive unprecedented levels of coverage, some of them for their abhorrent views. In one case, one of these people was a paid commentator for a TV network. I think doing nothing sends the wrong message to those people who are sitting there thinking they are alone. When you take a stand, when you call out this language, you give people the comfort of knowing that there are many Australians who do not support those views. When Muslims across the country heard the words and felt the hate directed at them from one of the recent first speeches, it was our view that that message needed to be countered with messages of welcome and respect to say, 'You are not alone'; that those views have no place in Australian society, let alone in the parliament. Some people say that is stifling freedom of speech, but freedom of speech does not mean we are forced to listen.

There are other people who argue that we should be talking through our differences with the parliamentarians who hold these views. I think it is a well-meaning perspective, but it is hopelessly naive and misguided. The idea that someone's long-held views—views that have been validated so often by a small segment of Australian society—will somehow change over a cup of tea and a biscuit is a triumph of hope over experience.

If we go quietly, ignoring harmful hate speech when we hear it, we tacitly give it approval and we allow it to proliferate and flourish. That is why we Greens will never be silent in the face of attacks against others who seek to make Australia their home. These are people who do so out of the same motivation as those of us who are already here. They seek nothing other than peace, security and shelter, and to get an education, experience good health and contribute to Australian society. It is our responsibility to stand with them and to take a stand against racism, against hate speech, wherever it occurs and in whatever form.