In the days since 7 October, many Jewish people have become fearful and anxious when outside their homes—and with justification. Some students from Jewish schools are avoiding wearing uniforms, and Jewish businesses are facing protests and boycotts. At the same time, Palestinian Australians and others are traumatised by events in Gaza. I am too. I’m desperately concerned about those in the Jewish community in Goldstein and the deaths of thousands of civilians in Gaza, especially children. As I’ve previously said in this place, the two feelings can coexist—indeed, they must.
Ms DANIEL (Goldstein) (17:24): As we awoke this morning, the newspapers were carrying a two-page advertisement from more than 600 prominent Australians—business, community and sporting leaders—decrying the increase in antisemitism in the seven weeks since the appalling Hamas terrorist attacks on Israeli communities. According to the organisers of the advertisement, there has been an increase of 482 per cent in antisemitic incidents in Australia in those seven weeks. As the signatories say:
We are unequivocal in our resolve that racism in all its forms is deplorable and abhorrent. Whether directed towards Jewish Australians, Muslim Australians, Asian Australians, Indigenous Australians or any other minority, we will not tolerate such conduct in our workplaces and firmly reject it in our communities.
To our Jewish employees, business partners, customers and all who are affected, we acknowledge the heightened feelings of threat being felt by your community right now and affirm your right to physical and psychological safety.
This is in line with what I’ve been saying publicly, including in parliament, for weeks now.
Two Fridays ago, at Princes Park in Caulfield South in my electorate of Goldstein, my fears were realised. As I said in the matter of public importance when the House last sat:
The unfolding conflict in Israel and Gaza had reached the streets of Melbourne in a frightening way, on a Friday, Shabbat, when members of our Jewish community were at worship in a synagogue nearby. A fire in a nearby Palestinian-owned store drew protesters into a heavily Jewish neighbourhood, at a time when residents were walking the streets to and from shule with their families. … No-one was seriously hurt, thankfully, but the anxiety among the Jewish community after the terror attacks of 7 October in Israel affecting, in many cases, people who they know, has been magnified.
As the signatories to today’s advertisement affirm, antisemitism is on the rise. We’ve seen antisemitic stickers plastered over a Starbucks outlet in central Melbourne, businesses with Jewish employees targeted by protesters with intimidating anti-Israeli signs and, recently, a Nazi sympathiser giving the Nazi salute as he left court and Neo-Nazis doing the same on the steps of the Victorian parliament. This is what this legislation is designed to help address. The question is whether it goes far enough, and I’ll come to that shortly.
In the days since 7 October, many Jewish people have become fearful and anxious when outside their homes—and with justification. Some students from Jewish schools are avoiding wearing uniforms, and Jewish businesses are facing protests and boycotts. At the same time, Palestinian Australians and others are traumatised by events in Gaza. I am too. I’m desperately concerned about those in the Jewish community in Goldstein and the deaths of thousands of civilians in Gaza, especially children. As I’ve previously said in this place, the two feelings can coexist—indeed, they must.
Some weeks ago, the director-general of ASIO warned:
… words matter. ASIO has seen direct connections between inflamed language and inflamed community tensions.
It’s not just words but also symbols that matter. That’s what this legislation is about: symbols of hate designed to inflame and arouse fear, and to promote collectives of people to do both those things. The legislation would criminalise the public display and trading of two Nazi symbols representing, as the Attorney-General has said, the vile ideology of the Third Reich and conjuring fear in many sectors of the Australian community whose families suffered the horrors of the Holocaust. However, the question is: what about other Nazi symbols? Jewish community leaders I’ve consulted are deeply worried, especially the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. As Peter Wertheim said in an email to me, Nazi groups will easily circumvent this by using other well-recognised Nazi symbols. In my view, the prohibition should be more general so that it can’t be circumvented. I’ve discussed this with the Attorney-General, and he’s undertaken that a close eye will be paid to this potential loophole for alternative hate symbols to be used.
ECAJ has also noted the need to prohibit Nazi salutes, and I’m pleased that the government has come around to including this in this legislation, despite initial hesitancy around jurisdiction. I agree with the executive council that there should be a federal law against Nazi gestures being performed in public so that there is a consistent legal regime across the country. So I welcome this measure. I’m also pleased that the legislation will ban trade in the outlawed Nazi symbols immediately, rather than being delayed by six to 12 months to give collectors a chance to dispose of those items. Those in possession of those items should have seen this coming, and I see no reason for a substantive delay.
Australia has limited ability to influence the course of events in Israel and Gaza. What we can do and have a responsibility to do is to articulate multipartisan calm, to encourage empathy and, at all costs, to take the politics away as well as to pull the legislative and policy levers that are available to us. From that perspective, this legislation is urgent. We must do everything that we can to maintain and promote social cohesion. I’m sure that most of my colleagues in this place will have been alarmed at the tone of communications from constituents to their offices in recent weeks—threats, anger and hatred from all sides.
Personally, on that level, having seen the aftermath of conflict around the world and, as a reporter, having been amid deadly civil unrest myself, I remain extremely concerned about what happens next, and that goes to triggers for hate in our communities here. Some years ago, I was amid the Red Shirts unrest in Bangkok, where pro-democracy protesters shutdown the city for several months until the military cleared them out, on a deadly day for both reporters and civilians, in 2010. In that case, a red shirt was the symbol, and wearing one could get you shot. I will never forget hiding under a Skytrain bridge that afternoon with a camera operator and producer as bullets pinged off the buildings around us—nor witnessing the bodies on the ground after. Anger and political tension—I learnt, through lived experience—can degenerate very quickly, and that’s without the deep and scarring memories of the Holocaust, which are underpinning the very real and justified fear among Australia’s Jewish community right now.
Recently, I was informed of the circulation in Goldstein and Kooyong of a Neo-Nazi flyer laden with antisemitism that vilified current and former MPs with language redolent of the catchphrases of the Nazism of Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. The horrors that led to the Holocaust were enabled, in part, by the Nazi regime’s sophisticated harnessing of the popular media of the time: radio, film and print. The digital landscape of the 21st century is far more complex, enabling evil actors not just to spout their extremist invocations but to interact with each other and to seduce those vulnerable to their conspiracist siren songs.
As I’ve said before, and will now say again, free speech is not hate speech, and hate speech should not be defended as such. The two things are vastly different and should be called out as such, as should right-wing extremism and those who fan it for their own ends. As Lydia Khalil, the Lowy Institute’s project director of digital threats to democracy, put it in her submission to the inquiry into extremist movements and radicalism in Australia that was conducted in the last parliament by the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security:
Conspiracy theories and conspiratorial mindsets are not new and have been identified as a factor in radicalising extremist movements. However, conspiratorial movements or individuals who believe in a conspiracy and are connected online, are now emerging as a standalone domestic extremist threat.
Khalil quoted the FBI in support of her argument:
Anti-government, identity-based, and fringe political conspiracy theories very likely will emerge, spread, and evolve in the modern information marketplace over the near term…occasionally driving both groups and individuals to commit criminal or violent acts.
As a foreign correspondent in the United States, I observed these disturbing developments, or the aftermath of them, firsthand. I strongly therefore believe that banning both Nazi salutes and hate symbols removes the mechanism for such collectives to identify and connect with each other, and I would further urge the government to consider whether there are further mechanisms to deal with hate speech online. That said, I support this legislation wholeheartedly—not a moment too soon.