Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge at the outset the valuable work done by security agencies throughout Australia in relation to the threat of terrorism. I want to place my remarks in a slightly broader context than the actual day-to-day work of those agencies, because the latest terrorist outrages in Manchester, London and Melbourne, as well as elsewhere in the world, are a reminder that the war against the West is an ongoing one and it is deadly. No group—as we have seen, not even innocent young people attending a concert in Manchester—is beyond the target of this evil assault on our culture and our values.

The fact that terrorism in the West is often perpetrated by young, radicalised second-generation migrants is indeed worrying. I submit that programs of deradicalisation have been insufficient to address this threat. We are often told that the real cause of terrorism is poverty, despair or disenfranchisement. But many of the young terrorists have been educated young people from relatively well-off families who are otherwise making the most of their new home.

The terrorists, and those who recruit and radicalise them, who committed those atrocities in Manchester, London, Paris, Berlin, New York and elsewhere do so because they believe that they work. Whether it is for publicity, recruitment or in the hope of winning concessions from Western nations, they believe that their war against the West will be rewarded. Let us not forget that Australian authorities have thwarted 12 imminent terrorist attacks on our soil and over 200 residents of this country are under surveillance and investigation by security agencies.

Unless we acknowledge that the enemy has a fanatical opposition to the values the West, then I believe we will never defeat it. What is at stake is the heart and the soul of our civilisation that upholds individual—with obligations and responsibilities to others—who is ultimately judged on his or her own conscious and actions, as the possessor of an inherent human dignity and inalienable rights. The assailants on our civilisation share one characteristic: the individual is subjugated to the group, defined in terms of race, religion or some other identity. This is at the core of the fundamentalist ideology. It must be exposed and defeated, because if we do not we run the risk of the backlash that could be equally deadly.

There is, I suggest, one central issue here and that is: how can we ensure the peaceful coexistence of different groups within our community? The issue is not new to the West. In the 16th and 17th centuries, a series of religious wars consumed much of England and Europe. In order to prevent the continual war of all against all, leading thinkers of the era, such as John Locke, arrived at the idea of toleration. It was a political virtue, a means of allowing individuals to subscribe to their individual and collective beliefs while allowing the nation to be separately governed. Toleration is a reciprocal obligation: each of us tolerates the belief systems of others. I tolerate somebody else's belief system in the reciprocal knowledge that they tolerate mine if they happen to differ.

But what do we do when some people refuse to tolerate the beliefs of others? This is a pressing question in the Western world today. A spate of terrorist offences involving young people who have not been prepared to peacefully coexist and are determined to violently force their views upon society make this a critical issue at the present time. There is, I suggest, a limit to toleration. When individuals or groups, through violence or incitement of violence, refuse to tolerate the beliefs of others we are not obligated to tolerate their activities; we are obligated to take whatever measures are necessary to ensure that the breakdown of that reciprocity does not continue to infect society as a whole with the deadly consequences which ensue.

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