Dave Sharma (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is not my first speech. I want to talk this evening about some of the domestic consequences we're seeing of the conflict that Senator McCarthy just referred to. Regardless of your views on the rights and wrongs of the current chapter of the Arab-Israeli conflict, we should all be able to agree here that some of the attacks we've seen and some of the harassment and intimidation we've seen fellow Australians subjected to should never be acceptable and should never be seen in our society. We have seen in Australia, as has been well documented and now well chronicled, levels of antisemitism that we simply have never experienced before in our history. Sometimes I think that term can confuse people as to what it is they're seeing. Antisemitism is simply just another form of racism or discrimination on the basis of someone's ethnicity or religion. And, just as we would not tolerate racism or discrimination on religious or ethnic grounds in Australia directed at any community, we should be equally condemnatory of this particular manifestation.

We have seen, to cite just a few examples in recent weeks, a couple down in Melbourne, who I had the pleasure of meeting with last week, who were attempting to enter the Melbourne Town Hall for a debate on this issue being held at the Melbourne City Council chambers and were pushed and shoved to the ground by a rowdy crowd of pro-Palestinian protesters outside. We've seen a 72-year-old Jewish man assaulted in Melbourne after his attacker spotted Jewish items in the back of his car. We saw an incident with a man on a tram in Melbourne who was recorded telling another Jewish man that he would, 'Gun down 10,000 of you tomorrow,' if he had a machine-gun, and, 'I'm going to blow a hole through your synagogue.'

In Sydney we've seen food and a box decorated with swastikas thrown at a group of 13-year-old girls wearing school uniforms. We've also seen a terrible doxxing attack a few weeks ago, where the personal and identifying details—photos, addresses and business names—of 600 Jewish Australians were publicly disclosed, with messages that accompanied them suggesting that they should be harassed or menaced, that their businesses should be boycotted and that they should be made to feel unsafe in their own community. I ask you: would we tolerate this directed towards any other group of Australians? Would we think this is acceptable in a society that prides itself on both its diversity and its tolerance? I think not.

When I was in Melbourne last week meeting with members of the Jewish community, I had several say to me something that I never thought I would hear Jewish people say here: 'We're beginning to talk about which country we should move to next.' Jewish Australians are feeling so unsafe that the historical fear that has plagued them as a people—the fear of being victims of a pogrom; of being exiled or, worse, subject to a form of genocide—is beginning to be felt in Australia. This is a collective failing on us all as Australians not only as leaders in our community or as elected representatives but also as the Australians who engage in this behaviour and the Australians who fail to speak up to condemn it.

Regardless of whether you support Israel's actions or not, and I respect that there are different views, including here, on this issue; regardless of whether you think the Palestinian people have a right to self-determination or not, and I do; and, regardless of what you think of the historical rights and wrongs of a conflict that now dates back 75 years, we should all be able to agree as a matter of necessity, if not morality, that we should not be subjecting our fellow Australians to these sorts of attacks. What we are doing is tearing at the very fabric of our success as a multicultural society.

And it's a rare success. It's not common for nations built of different groups of people from different religions and backgrounds to be able to forge a harmonious and successful whole. In Australia we've managed it, but only through careful nurturing and only through ensuring that our citizens are protected.

I do hope that we can all do more and can reflect on our own actions as we inevitably deal with the strong emotions and passions that this conflict can arouse and that, whatever our personal feelings on this, we can make sure that we do not seek to hold fellow Australians accountable for the actions that are taking place overseas.