Page 3025 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 15 August 2018
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Last night in his first speech in the Senate, Senator Fraser Anning instead used his words and his platform to appeal to the most vile and racist sentiments that fester in our nation. As federal Labor’s shadow minister for citizenship and multicultural Australia, Tony Burke, said in his speech last night:
Senator Anning’s words are not the words of a proud Australian. They are the words of people who hate modern Australia, people who hate who we are as Australians.
Senator Anning has since said that his words were not intended to denigrate the Jewish community. What Senator Anning has clearly failed to understand is that his words did far more than that. He denigrated not only the Muslim community quite deliberately but Australia itself as a successful, modern and multicultural nation. His words and everything they stand for must be condemned. In fact, not only must we condemn the words spoken, we must also condemn silence in the face of this type of abhorrent vilification.
Tonight, on behalf of the ACT Labor government I condemn Senator Anning’s comments. I call on everyone in this place and all Canberrans to heed the Prime Minister’s call to reject and condemn racism in any form. I welcome Malcolm Turnbull’s and the federal Liberals’ condemnation of Senator Anning’s words—of course I do—but we cannot let them off the hook completely.
Unfortunately, this is the same Liberal Party that has been trying to fuel panic in Victoria about the apparent threat of African gangs, vilifying an entire community. This is the same Liberal Party which is seeking to introduce a university-level English language requirement for citizenship and which sought to water down our laws on hate speech. Hearing the federal Liberals condemn racism on the one hand and use it as a political tool on the other may seem like a bizarre inconsistency but it reveals a cynical truth about the federal Liberals. They have decided that there are votes in prejudice, and they are willing to go there.
On ABC Radio Canberra this morning local advocate and president of Australian Muslim Voice, Diana Abdel-Rahman, responded to Senator Anning’s remarks. Diana said:
I couldn’t sleep last night. I have to say that I was purely, at first, disgusted, and then I think, a dreaded fear.
Diana, someone many of us know well, went on to explain how the political environment has emboldened people to make vile remarks in the vein of Senator Anning’s speech. She said:
I’ve been watching a language over the last maybe 10 years or more—what’s been happening is, as our politicians have been allowed to say defamatory things in Parliament about immigration or multiculturalism, or about the Muslim community or the African community or the Chinese community, it’s been let go—which then emboldens the next politician to go that step further, and here we are.
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