Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

History has some very powerful lessons for us. It helps us to get a better perspective on the issues of the day. Today, one of the big issues is the pressure that the Muslim community in Australia is under. Its leaders are being called on to do more. Individual community members feel variously embarrassed, angry or conflicted by the violence that is being perpetrated in the name of Islam around the world and in at least one instance in our own country.

Earlier this week I had a very lovely Muslim taxi driver who poured out to me his passionate commitment to this country, how he appreciated the freedom that this country had given him and his family and how he appreciated the public education that his children were receiving. He said he could not understand those who would seek to come to this country if they did not value these things. Like the vast majority of Islamic Australians, he was overwhelmingly committed to the values of tolerance and freedom.

It is important for us to understand that Australia has been here before. In the 19th and 20th centuries, it was the Irish Catholics who worked in the spotlight, whose loyalty and patriotism was under suspicion. The police, the Protestant polemicists and, indeed, some of the Catholic hierarchy believed that the Australian Irish community sheltered devotees of the principle of violent insurrection. In a striking parallel, there was even a crazed supporter of the Fenian cause, Henry O'Farrell, who made an attempt to assassinate Prince Alfred during a visit to Sydney. There were mass rallies in response to this, and when leading Catholics described the acts of Henry O'Farrell as those of a lone madman they were howled down. It was felt by the community that this was part of a much bigger problem that we had with Irish Catholics. There were demands for purges of Irish Catholic disaffection and, indeed, there was an anti-Catholic union formed. Of course, we had political leaders get into the frame. Henry Parkes, who was never one to let a political opportunity go by, beat the drum and decided to exploit the hysteria. He introduced urgent bills into the parliament for the better suppression and punishment of seditious practices and attempts.

We need to look at what has happened in the past and at the role of Irish Catholics here today. The Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition both are Catholics, something perhaps unimaginable during the time when Irish Catholics were under such deep suspicion. We have to learn from this. We have a problem at the moment with terrorism. It is a problem, particularly with the technological capacities available today, which we really must address. But it is a problem that we as Muslim and non-Muslim Australians must work together to resolve. We simply cannot make the mistake we made 100 and 150 years ago and cast suspicion on an entire community. Rather, we must recognise that we can work together, that we can move through this, and that ultimately we will be a society, when the absurdity of the Catholic-Protestant sectarianism the past seems absurd, I am confident that if we keep committed and focused we can make that Muslim and non-Muslim divide equally absurd.