SOCIAL COHESION IN AUSTRALIA – THE CHALLENGE – JULIAN LEESER

Australia prides itself on its multicultural and socially cohesive nature. But in the months following the October 7 massacres in Israel, intolerance, even hatred, has seen a disturbing level of social division, especially in attacks both verbally and physically on Australian Jews. Julian Leeser, the Liberal member for Berowra in Sydney has long been a passionate defender of human rights and a supporter of Australia’s diverse and multicultural makeup. But, as a Jewish Australian, he has become very concerned at Australia’s lack of serious response to attacks on Australian Jews in recent years. To explain his findings and why he should be so concerned, Julian Leeser addressed The Sydney Institute on Wednesday 23 October 2024.

SOCIAL COHESION IN AUSTRALIA – THE CHALLENGE

JULIAN LEESER

Well, thank you so much Gerard, it’s an honour and a privilege to be here this evening at the Sydney Institute. Let me begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and pay respect to elders past and present. And let me acknowledge you, Gerard, and Anne, and all the board members of the Sydney Institute.

I’m particularly honoured to be asked to speak about social cohesion this evening at the invitation of Gerard, a person who’s played a major role in Australia’s public life over many decades and someone who’s written and spoken about Australia’s culture and our social cohesion from almost all of that time. You’ve done so, Gerard, if I may say, with a view to make Australia a stronger place; for that I thank you, and I thank you tonight for the opportunity to provide my perspective on this important topic.

With the King in town this week, I’ve thought about the works and the words of my first political mentor, the late Sir Asher Joel, a proud Jewish Australian. Sir Asher was variously a journalist, a parliamentarian, a naval officer, and a founder of Australia’s public relations industry. He was the organiser of many royal tours. He published the bible on Australian public etiquette called Protocol and Procedures.

Sir Asher wrote, “Protocol is, after all, another name for good manners, and the procedures are the form by which they are observed.” The protocols which have underpinned the success of Australian society are embodied in the obligations outlined in the Citizenship Pledge which says, “I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect and whose laws I will uphold and obey.”

The pledge outlines the obligations of all Australians. To be loyal to Australia and put Australians first, to believe in a system of government where the people are sovereign, to respect the rights and freedoms of other citizens, to obey and support our laws. These are not onerous obligations but when their observance breaks down, so society also breaks down.

Earlier this week I had the privilege of attending the reception at Parliament House to mark the visit of the King and Queen to Australia. The Prime Minister, a republican and the Leader of the Opposition, a monarchist, made appropriate speeches acknowledging the significance of King Charles’ affection for Australia and the warm welcome he’d received in Australia.

I think my leader Peter Dutton captured the mood of the occasion when he said, and I quote, “We hope your spirits have been lifted by the response that you’ve received so far yesterday in Sydney and today at the war memorial and indeed here in this hall in this eclectic gathering. People have had haircuts, you can see I didn’t. People have shined shoes, suits have been pressed. And that’s just Republicans. As we know, your majesty, you’re a most welcome guest in the country.”

The King then spoke of his affection for Australia and its people, and the particular way the country has helped to shape him. It was a perfectly fine state occasion. Differences were acknowledged, but the protocols and procedures were observed.

Then, following the King’s speech, Lydia Thorpe, a former Green Senator turned independent, approached the dais and yelled at the King, “This is not your land. You are not my King. You destroyed our land. Give us a treaty. We want a treaty in this country. You are a genocidalist.” Security officers were forced to intervene and escort her from the premises as she shouted, “F—  the colony.”

My friend Linda Burney, the former Minister for Indigenous Australians, put it well when she said, “Whether you agree with the institution of the monarchy, there’s an element of respect that needs to come into play and I don’t think Lydia did herself any favours or acted respectfully yesterday.” Lydia Thorpe, who refuses to acknowledge the Australian nation but serves in its parliament, embodies why social cohesion in this country is under strain. Lydia Thorpe is also one of parliament’s most outspoken anti-Israel activists, and regularly wears her Keffiyeh in the chamber with other members of her former party actively participating in the increasingly violent anti-Israel gatherings.

Now Lydia Thorpe is entitled to her views. Disagreement and debate are the stuff of our democracy. But what Lydia Thorpe did this week is an example of the problem Australia is currently facing.

There are people who are seeking to change Australian society who don’t have any regard for Australia’s democratic beliefs, or its people, or their rights and liberties, or their laws. Australian social cohesion is breaking down because of the failure of people in leadership in Australia, political leaders, police, university leaders and the Human Rights Commission and others to enforce the law and the values underpinning the citizenship pledge. Social cohesion only works if people obey the law, and that law is enforced against everyone equally.

Around the world, Western democracies are under strain from anarchists who believe that the usual rules don’t apply to them. They destroy property and the symbols of Western culture. They throw paint at old masters. They behead statues. They burn flags. They storm democratic buildings, and they disrupt public events. They graffiti public and private property. They intimidate their fellow citizens in their suburbs, in their schools, and in their places of worship.

These people keep pushing the envelope, and they keep testing the resolve of governments, academics, and law enforcement, all of which have shown themselves to be wanting in an age when we need people to just simply enforce the law and make an example of those who transgress.

The treatment of Jews in Western society is a test case for the multiculturalism that has existed in those societies. Does the protection of the rights of citizens in those societies extend to Jewish people? Or are those societies now governed by a woke philosophy which sees Jews as a racially privileged group robbed of their God-given individuality and agency?

That’s why the way we deal with anti-Semitism sets us up for the sort of society that we want to live in. The way we deal with anti-Semitism sets us up for the sort of society we will be in the future. Are we to be a society based on conspiracy or fact? On othering or personal responsibility? On social discord or social harmony?

Now governing a society is no different from running a family. In families, parents set and enforce boundaries. Psychologists tell us, and I can agree with them as a parent of a six-year-old and a two-year-old, that children crave boundaries. And while they constantly test them, when the boundaries are enforced, children learn good from wrong, good from bad behaviour.

In societies, citizens crave boundaries, and they need them enforced, otherwise those societies break down. There have always been, and there will always be, different views about political issues in Australia. But when people move outside the realms of the law to express those differences and disagreements, and there’s no consequence for doing so, then society ultimately breaks down.

The growing number of people who believe that the law doesn’t apply to them, and the moral cowardice of leaders and their failure to enforce the law has created the sense of breakdown in social cohesion that exists here today. John Howard often said that the things which unite us as Australians are far greater than those which divide us. That remains the view of the vast middle of Australia.

The greater concern that I have is, the longer this failure to enforce the law and demonstrate the consequence of behaviour exists, the more we’re sending the wrong signal to the next generation of Australians about what is acceptable conduct in this country.

It’s almost exactly 12 months to this day since I spoke at the Sydney Institute last. It was the 3 October 2023. At that time, we were having a debate about changing the constitution. It was a debate where Australians had different views, but it was a debate that was, for the large part, conducted civilly. Had I been asked then, I would never have predicted the basic decline in civil norms and the outbreak of lawlessness that we’ve seen over the last 12 months since the October 7 terrorist attacks.

It’s very difficult to predict the future; difficult to argue that Australia has become a stronger and more cohesive country in the last 12 months. While there are a range of factors that affect Australia’s social cohesion, it would be remiss of me not to pay particular attention to what has happened in this country since those terrorist attacks on October 7.

On October 7, the world changed, not Israel, not the world for Jews, but the entire democratic world. Australia has been the world’s most successful multicultural society, but the failure of our institutions to defend the right of law-abiding Australians since October 7 has been a surprise and shock to many.

On October 7, the world saw the largest murder of Jews on a single day since the Holocaust. The attacks took place on the festival of Simchat Torah, a joyous holiday celebrating the annual cycle of reading the Torah where Jews dance with the Torah in the synagogue as if it were a bride.

Tomorrow, around the world, Jewish people will be celebrating the first Simchat Torah since October 7. This year, coinciding with what’s usually a joyous time, memorial services are being held around the world to remember the victims of October 7. As we know, on that day, 1,200 men, women, and children were slaughtered in their homes in Kibbutzim and at a music festival.

In an age of violent movies and games, the deaths of 1,200 people can be mistaken for just another statistic. While the taking of any human life is a tragedy, what marked out these deaths was the sadistic nature of the killings. Hamas wanted people to watch the depravity of what they did. That’s why they filmed the acts and broadcast them in real-time. The murders, the rapes of wives in front of husbands, the butchery of children in front of their parents.

The Hamas terrorists revelled in the satanic way they tortured and killed people, and then Gazans cheered as the terrorists spat on Jewish corpses that were paraded through the streets. Those slaughtered that day included babies, Holocaust survivors, young people attending music festivals, and people who’d devoted their lives to better relations with Palestinians.

What we saw that day was the worst of humankind, a horrendous act that would surely draw immediate and unequivocal condemnation and see enduring international solitude. Condemnation did follow. Leaders around the world spoke out against the horror, knowing that that Nova music festival could have been any music festival in their own countries.

The horrors that occurred that day are an ongoing reality for 100 hostages currently being held underground by the terrorists, and for their families. Australia is a Western liberal democracy. We believe in the rule of law, and we protect the rights of minorities in this country. Australia’s foreign policy tradition is that we stand with like-minded western liberal democracies, particularly against external threats.

One would have thought, therefore, that Australia and Australians would stand unequivocally with Jewish people, as we stood with America after 9/11, and as other western liberal democracies stood with us and Indonesia after the Bali bombings. And it’s true to say that many Australians did, and still do, stand with Jewish people.

My personal experience of the weeks that followed the terrorist attacks was of great support from my electorate. I represent very few Jewish Australians, and for many people in the electorate, I’m the only Jewish person they know. I remember the kindness of the parishioners at St Stephen’s Anglican Church, Normanhurst, who brought flowers to my office because they didn’t know what else to do to express their feelings of sorrow and solidarity. The statement that was put out by the local Catholic Bishop, Anthony Randazzo of Broken Bay, who condemned the attacks and expressed solidarity with the Jewish people. Being on pre-poll for the referendum and volunteers from both sides of the debate wanting to check in on me and see that I was okay and expressing their support for Jewish Australians.

Even a year on, almost every week this still happens, a random person, often a stranger in my electorate, comes up to me and says, “Thank you for standing against anti-Semitism.”  “Thank you for standing our values.” And, strangely, it’s most often accompanied by a hug, something you rarely experience in politics. But it’s a sign of the emotional connection of fair-minded Australians with what’s happened in the world and in our country today.

Though, just as soon as the tributes flowed, so did the words which sought to call into doubt the barbaric actions of the Hamas terrorists or downplay its significance, with others justifying those attacks. The immediacy and the callousness, with which the massacre took place, was justified by some as a moral crusade against the State of Israel, even before the commencement of Israel’s operations in Gaza.

But worst and more alarmingly was the celebration. And the celebrations continue not far from where we are sitting this evening. Previously hidden from public view, anti-Jewish displays were held proudly at Australian landmarks. The gathering at the Sydney Opera House on October 9 was designed to send a signal to the world.

Pro-Hamas protesters descended, chanting, chanting anti-Jewish slogans. They set off flares and burned flags under the watchful eye of the police. The protesters, through their actions, demonstrated their contempt. They acted as though they were outside the law, and seemingly, given the lack of arrests, tacit approval for the non-peaceful protest they were.  At the same time, on the very same night, law-abiding Jewish Australians were told not to come into the city.

The day after the terrorist attack, at a rally in Western Sydney organised by the radical Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, they celebrated the October 7 massacre.  Sheikh Ibrahim Dadoun gave a speech where he said, “I’m smiling, I’m happy, I’m elated. It’s a day of courage, it’s a day of resistance, it’s a day of pride. This is the day we’ve been waiting for.” Imagine that.

Within a day, while operations to recover bodies and the search for survivors continued as first responders were wading through the carnage at the kibbutzim, anti-Semitism was unleashed in Australia, and it was unashamed.

Looking back to 2001, it would be unimaginable to see such widespread support for terrorists. Terrorists that we list as terrorists in our own country, who murdered 3,000 people in the September 11 terrorist attacks. Yet here in Australia, there were those delighting in Jewish suffering. On October 10, in Melbourne, people in a car stopped and asked a man on the street if he knew where the Jews were. He asked what they’d do if they found any Jews and they responded, “They’ll know what we’re going to do once we’re done with them.” Another passenger in the car said, “We’re hunting for Jews.”

The National Socialist Network flew a banner that said, “Expose Jewish power” over Flinders Street station in Melbourne on the 14th of October. Twenty to 30 National Socialist Network members dressed in black with balaclavas then marched onto the station doing Hitler salutes and entered the train. It was reported they questioned passengers to see if any of them were Jewish.

All around our country, there has been a growing sense of lawlessness since October 7. The intimidatory drive-throughs in Jewish suburbs, the confrontations outside synagogues, the vandalism and firebombing of MPs’ Electorate offices, an event I regard as a terrorist attack simpliciter.

The vandalism of war memorials, the vandalism of Jewish properties including schools, calling for death to Jews. Hate preachers openly calling for the murder of Jews and vilifying Jews as being subhuman. The doxing of Jewish creatives, artists and small businesses. A Greens MP repeating anti-Semitic tropes without being censured by her own party. Posters of Hitler going up all over Jewish suburbs. Protests outside Jewish schools and synagogues.

There were violent protests at the Victorian Labor Conference which saw MPs being jostled and attacked and delayed the conference forcing the Victorian Premier and Deputy Premier into a safe-room. There were violent and aggressive protests at peaceful rallies against anti-Semitism, trespassing on and defacing Federal Parliament, and on our university campuses where violence and intimidation go unchecked, where rapes are denied and where Hizb ut-Tahrir gets a seat at the table.

There are protesters flaunting the laws designed to stop the support of terrorist organisations or the display of their symbols on our streets or the glorification of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders by displaying their colours or versions of their symbols and flags with every intention of thumbing their noses at the laws, but just the right side of the line so they don’t get caught.

The violence involved in the Melbourne riots outside the Land Forces exhibition reached a new and unprecedented level. Rioters threw acid, faeces, bags of vomit, padlocks, apples, chairs, canned food and bottles at the police. They punched horses and destroyed property. They set alight plastic bins and prevented firefighters from getting to them so that chemical fumes from burning plastics would pervade the air. Green’s MPs encouraged and participated in such protests.

The protesters get more brazen because too often they’re not dealt with by the full force of the law. Against this, yesterday I went with a Liberal candidate for Wentworth, Ro Knox, and the Shadow Minister for Home Affairs, Senator James Paterson, and the Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton. We visited Avner’s, a Jewish-owned bakery in Surry Hills. We met the owner, Ed Halmagyi, a man of remarkable resilience and passion for his business and for our country.

I’m sure you’ve heard about the recent attacks on Avner’s where the store was graffitied with the red triangle symbol of Hamas and a note warning, ‘be careful,’ shoved under the door. Ed told me about a night in the city where he was attacked by a group of people who were fighting for his life.  Ed told me about another incident, which received much less publicity.

One morning, two men, inner-city types, wearing their chambray shirts, their chinos and RM Williams, but with keffiyehs and gloves approached him at his store. Ed has nothing to do with the government of Israel or the decisions of the IDF. He’s just a baker and he happens to be Jewish and he makes great bagels and babka. That didn’t matter to these two men. They threw dog excrement at him, and they hit their mark. He stood there covered in dog excrement but maintained his dignity.

Using some pretty colourful language, he told the men to get off his property. Ed’s a big man. He’s a strong man. He stood proud. Despite what’s happened to him, he reminded me that Australia is still a great country for Jewish Australians.

A part of where Ed draws his strength is the support that he gets from his community, and fair-minded Australians who hate seeing their fellow citizens targeted in this way. I admire Ed’s stoicism, and I agree with his attitude. But no Australian, regardless of their background, should have to put up with that sort of conduct.

The permissibility of Jew hatred has led to an alarming degree of complacency. Now instances of anti-Semitism have become so commonplace that only the most extreme ones get more than a moment of media reporting.

The events in our country post October 7 have revealed a dangerous underbelly in Australia and given licence to others, including those in power, to turn a blind eye or in some cases to speak freely about their own previously guarded anti-Semitism.

Australia’s institutions have previously operated as stabilisers and grounding points to uphold and defend our democratic values. But what happens when the very institutions charged with that essential role fail to tackle or worse, become part of the problem? Too often since the 7th of October, government and institutions have failed to provide the moral leadership necessary to deal with these issues. Let me provide three examples.

First are the universities. Even before 7 October, campus anti-Semitism had been a problem for decades. In August 2023, two months before the Hamas terrorist attacks, the Australian Jewish University survey revealed that 64 per cent of Jewish university students had experienced anti-Semitism on campus; 57 per cent had hidden the fact they were Jewish; 19 per cent had stayed away from campus because of the anti-Semitism and when anti-Semitism occurred; 61 per cent who made a complaint were dissatisfied with the outcome.

But let me remind you, that’s August 2023, before the 7 October. While anti-Semitism was a problem before October 7, since that time it’s been off the charts. The government’s own special envoy on anti-Semitism, Jillian Segal, has described the situation on campus as very grave and much more serious and alarming than she’d expected. She found anti-Semitic behaviour is not only present on many campuses but it’s an embedded part of the culture.

Universities have not taken appropriate action to denounce and supress it, it has become systemic. The Jewish students are traumatised and feel isolated and unsafe. They’re not participating in university life as they should. They’ve been told by the university administrators to stay home for their own safety.

This normalised anti-Semitism is incredibly dangerous to our society, as it’s an attitude and behaviour that eats away at the fabric of the mission of the tertiary sector. To date, university leadership is either in denial about how serious and normalised anti-Semitism has become on their campuses; or fail to ttruly understand what constitutes anti-Semitism and have responded by placating activist forces.

Even before the appointment of the Special Envoy, I put forward a private member’s bill to establish a judicial inquiry into anti-Semitism on campus. I met with university leaders, with Jewish organisations, with staff and students in preparing the bill. Non-Jewish university administrators from around the country continue to contact me to tell me that I’m on the right track.

Labor has three times refused to allow me to debate my bill in the House of Representatives. On one occasion, in response to me moving a suspension of standing orders, they even put forward a motion for the unconditional and unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state in response to my motion.

In the Senate, Shadow Education Minister Sarah Henderson has introduced my bill, which was then referred to the Senate for an inquiry. That’s right, an inquiry into whether to have an inquiry.

Senators heard from Jewish students and academics in Jewish organisations. One thing particularly stood out to me. In almost 700 submissions, the overwhelming number were named withheld or treated confidentially. This is almost unprecedented for a Federal Parliamentary inquiry. But it speaks to the security concerns and the fears of retribution faced by many Jewish students and academics.

The Judicial Inquiry Bill is supported by every major Jewish organisation in the country. It’s a bill that’s supported by the government’s own Special Envoy, Jill Segal. It’s a bill that’s not opposed by the Human Rights Commission, which was the alternative place to send the inquiry. And it’s a bill that is not opposed by the universities. And yet this government refuses to adopt the Judicial Inquiry into anti-Semitism on Australian university campuses.

Despite the powerful dissenting report of Coalition Senators Sarah Henderson and Paul Scarr, the Labor-controlled Committee has sought to refer the issue of campus anti-Semitism to the partisan Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. Another political exercise with a committee full of grandstanding Greens, which will just put Jewish staff and students in the same position as before.

In the meantime, the Coalition has committed to the Judicial Inquiry into anti-Semitism on campus as a Coalition policy. We believe the Judicial Inquiry is the only way to effectively investigate these instances of anti-Semitism on campus. Led by an independent and respected jurist with full investigatory powers, assisted by skilled cross-examiners. Only a judicial inquiry could hear evidence confidentially without witnesses fearing reprisals.

Such an inquiry provides the best chance to ensure that anti-Semitism on campus, which is a long-running cultural problem and a serious concern for the social cohesion in our country, is properly addressed. But by failing to listen to their own anti-Semitism Envoy, by sitting on their hands proposing an ineffective alternative, Labor is demonstrating contempt towards the Jewish community and the radical campus activists are taking note.

The second institution that has been failing to uphold social cohesion is the Human Rights Commission. The Human Rights Commission is an organisation that’s supposed to deal with racism and social cohesion. And yet, as I’ve said in the past, in relation to dealing with anti-semitism, the AHRC has been AWOL.

Now, although the Commission does well from the Australian taxpayer, it’s failed by any objective measure to protect all Australians from prejudice and hate. Indeed, some of its own staff and contractors have been the lead perpetrators of such hatred and vile anti-semitism. To give one example, when the sustained anti-Jewish online activities of one of their staff members were discovered and questioned by the media, the Commission sided with their staff member. No action, no comment.

When months later the same staff member was found to have continued and increased the intensity of her online hatred, including promoting a protest at the Prime Minister’s office, the Commission quietly noted that the person no longer worked there rather than calling out the incident and terminating their employment.

Following the October 7 attacks, no Commissioner made a speech or gave a statement or unequivocally condemned the October 7 terrorist attacks or the anti-semitism in this country for more than six months. There was no special hotline or services established to support Australia’s Jewish community, despite the more than 700 per cent increase in anti-Semitism. Indeed, there was a reckless indifference to the attacks and any effect they might have had here in Australia. This is despite the Commission’s role as dealing with racism in Australia.

One Commissioner, Lorraine Finlay, it must be said, finally did speak up. The Commission can’t do their job if there’s systemic racism against one group of Australians, which it’s designed to serve, and if that community has no confidence in the ability of the Commission to deal with them.

I put a series of questions to the Attorney General as the responsible Minister in charge of the Commission about the Commission’s performance. But when I asked the Attorney about the extent to which he’d made inquiries into the rank anti-Semitism inside the organisation, including whether he’d spoken to the commission about its employment and contracting policies to ensure there was no bias against Jewish Australians, or if the Attorney asked the commission at any point to undertake an audit of its staff and contractors to see whether anyone else had engaged in acts of racism against Jewish Australians, my questions went unanswered.

Finally, more than 80 days later, with a blunt bureaucratic answer, the Attorney explained the Commission was an independent statutory agency and, in effect, there’s nothing to see here. The Commission has failed in its charter. They failed to take anti-Semitism seriously, and their Minister, the Attorney General, is not taking these issues seriously either. The Commission now has a new president and, to his credit, he has made one speech on anti-Semitism. But there’s no evidence that he’s taken all necessary measures to ensure that the Jew hatred which became endemic in that organisation has been properly rooted out. But what happens? And this is my third example. When one of the mainstream political parties in Australia adopts anti-Semitism as one of their key doctrines, what happens when they take a Corbynite posture? How does that help social cohesion? And what should the response of other political parties be?

Australians vote for the Greens thinking they’re a party concerned with the environment. In Parliament, political parties express their priorities through removing suspensions of standing orders to get issues urgently debated. Of the 32 suspensions of standing orders, in both houses moved by the Greens since the 7 October, only 15 per cent relate to the environment, while nearly half relate to the Middle East. The Greens have become a party obsessed with Jews in Israel.

The Australian Greens have refused to condemn the terrorist attacks of October 7. They voted against or absented themselves from all resolutions doing so in every Australian Parliament. Greens leaders have difficulty in saying that Hamas is a terrorist organisation or that it should be disbanded. A Victorian Greens MP refuses to say that Israel should have the right to exist. A New South Wales Greens parliamentarian said that Jews have tentacles and shouldn’t be able to participate in the public life of this country. She wasn’t condemned by any of her colleagues.

Greens MPs and Senators attend and participate in violent protests and riots. They encourage their own people to go to the Opera House on October 9, and they’ve done everything to undermine social cohesion in this country. They refuse to condemn the phrase “from the river to the sea”. In fact, they use the phrase themselves, effectively calling for the genocide of a people.

One senator, Mehreen Faruqi, posted a photo of herself dressed in a keffiyeh next to a sign that said “keep the world clean” with a photo of the Star of David being put into a rubbish bin. The Greens have endorsed a candidate who is the president of an organisation which has posted online statements in support of terrorists. The Greens endorsed a rally where the flags of listed terrorist organisations were displayed and participated in the Melbourne riots.

The Greens have engaged in intimidatory demonstrations outside electorate offices and spread misinformation about Australia’s involvement with the Israel-Hamas war, and they’ve rightly been condemned by the Prime Minister and his senior ministers. Now, given the conduct of the Greens, a party that is promoting anti-Semitic attitudes, last November I called for all the major political parties to put the Greens last, and give the Greens the same treatment that One Nation got in the late 1990s.

While the Coalition has agreed to put the Greens last, Labor talks a big game, but the real test will be what they do with their preferences. Will they aid more and abet more Greens with these sorts of attitudes to get into federal parliament on the back of their preferences? And in the event of a hung parliament, what issues, values, or communities will they be willing to sacrifice to the Greens to form government with their support?

As I’ve illustrated, when it comes to our political parties, the Human Rights Commission and the universities, their failure to address anti-Semitism is weakening our social cohesion. But in a time when people are thumbing their noses at the law, what role can the law play in helping to restore social cohesion?

First, I agree with my friend James Paterson, the Shadow Minister for Home Affairs, where he said that Australia faces a crisis of law enforcement. We need police and those in authority to enforce the laws already on the books. We need government ministers to send unequivocal signals that enforcing the law is a baseline expectation. But the conduct of some, and the failures to enforce, can also reveal gaps in the law that need to be plugged.

When Australia lists a terrorist organisation, that should mean something. It should mean that Australians should have nothing to do with that organisation in any form. They shouldn’t demonstrate any support or glorify such an organisation. Following some of the more brazen protests where terrorists were mourned and praised as martyrs, a small number of charges were laid.

These charges were limited and brought only against those flying a flag emblazoned with a terrorist symbol. Other radical protesters have found ways of avoiding the law, yet they still make their point by displaying symbols that may not be the precise emblem of a terrorist organization, yet which resemble something remarkably similar as if it were a terrorist symbol. These people have thumbed their nose at the law, which is actually designed to catch precisely that sort of conduct.

At the heart of our laws, what must be considered is the intention of the act, not just the act in and of itself. Does the act of displaying a symbol with similar characteristics to a terrorist organisation, have the same desired intent? I would argue in the case of recent pro-Hezbollah and pro-Hamas protests it does. And I think the law needs to be strengthened to ensure that intent to show support for the actions of a terrorist organisation, including by displaying a like symbol, should also be caught by the law.

Similarly, displaying the image of a prominent person who’s associated with or representative of a listed terrorist organisation, or an image bearing a likeness to such a person, is also the sort of conduct that should be made a criminal offence. Our laws must say that there is a zero tolerance in support for terrorists and for terrorist organisation in any way, shape or form.

It’s actually extraordinary hearing myself say that, and that it should be in any way controversial. But in Australia in 2024 it is. Our laws must indicate to law enforcement that we expect them to apply a zero-tolerance test in dealing with those who seek to damage Australia’s social cohesion. Our laws must always make Australia and Australians safer. And our Parliament needs to give consideration to further strengthening these laws.

Changing the law doesn’t immediately solve the many issues facing Australia today, although ensuring that hate symbols or symbols associated with or designed to be in support of listed terrorist organisations are not able to be displayed in this country is definitely a step in the right direction.

In closing, let me return to where I started. Today we farewelled the King from our shores. In seeing the King here, I’m reminded of the words he spoke only weeks ago about the underlying virtues in countries bound together by parliamentary democracy. The King spoke of wisdom, of justice, of compassion and integrity. The King said this of our times: We’re often told that we live in an era of polarisation and division.

If that’s so, then it’s perhaps even more important, not less, that in the vital areas of representation, of political debate, of policy making and of discourse, these values, together with hope, civility and generosity of spirit are never far from the heart of even the most difficult of issues.

Friends, in this time, this is the sort of Australia we must all strive to build a country of justice, compassion, hope and civility. Where with generosity towards supporter and opponent, we work to strengthen the cords between all of us and with all around the world who seek freedom, security and fairness.

And that starts with enforcing the law.