I listened to the last speaker. Much as I greatly revere and honour her point of view, you stand back here and you say 1,200 people were murdered—there is no other word for it—in cold blood in Israel. If I was Israeli, there would be one thing that I would do immediately. And anyone on earth that thinks they’re not entitled to do that doesn’t read history books. If you know that you can do this and get away with it, if people in this country, Australia, can exercise their right to vehement antisemitism, I as an Australian am saying that that is un-Australian. If you want to be un-Australian, then you go back to where you came from—and I make no apologies for that.
Mr KATTER (Kennedy) (18:20): I listened to the last speaker. Much as I greatly revere and honour her point of view, you stand back here and you say 1,200 people were murdered—there is no other word for it—in cold blood in Israel. If I was Israeli, there would be one thing that I would do immediately. And anyone on earth that thinks they’re not entitled to do that doesn’t read history books. If you know that you can do this and get away with it, if people in this country, Australia, can exercise their right to vehement antisemitism, I as an Australian am saying that that is un-Australian. If you want to be un-Australian, then you go back to where you came from—and I make no apologies for that.
My family had to fight with their fists to be accepted as Australians. As my brother, a lecturer in law for 30 or 40 years at a prominent university, said, Australia has never been multicultural; we have always been monocultural. If you want to come to Australia, you become an Australian. If that’s unreasonable, then I don’t know that you’re the sort of person we should have in this country. That people could go out on the streets and terrorise, that Jewish schools have people with machine guns to protect those going to school, and you are advocating here that these people be given protection—that is what you are saying. Some of them have come here as migrants. They have had very serious charges laid against them.
In my opinion, the High Court was legislating. I think that, if anything, the government lacked an alacrity in dealing with the problem. There is a separation of powers, and in my opinion there is evidence now that we have a rogue High Court that does not understand the separation of powers. Their decision, in my opinion, was legislation. I bend the knee to nobody in this area. I advised the Queensland government on Mabo and told the Premier he was completely wrong, that we spent $54 million on the best lawyers in Australia and they were wrong—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Buchholz ): I thank the member for Kennedy for his contribution. The time for the debate has now expired. The original question was that the bill be now read a second time. To this, the honourable member for Wannon has moved as an amendment that all words after ‘That’ be omitted with a view to substituting other words. Subsequent amendments have been moved by honourable members.
The SPEAKER: The question before the House is that the amendment moved by the honourable member for Goldstein be agreed to.