Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker Somlyay, in your capacity as the member for Fairfax I commend you for bringing this motion before the House today. As I listened to your contribution I had visions of your parents bringing you to Australia in 1949 and how terrible the decision must have been for them to leave everything in their homeland, flee in order to be able to provide a better life for their family and spend time in a refugee camp before arriving in Australia as refugees. What a great Australian story it is that people can flee their homeland as refugees, arrive in Australia, rise to represent people in this place and be a minister within the Howard government. It is a great tribute to you and your family. It is a vindication of what they did all those years ago. Australia continues to have a very proud record of welcoming the world’s refugees, many of whom now end up in my electorate of Stirling.

The Hungarian Uprising was of course a stark example of the brutality of the communist system as it was imposed on eastern and central Europe at the close of World War II. It is also an example of courage. It was a real David and Goliath battle that pitted the might of the Warsaw Pact, with all its tanks, artillery and war planes, against the ordinary Hungarian people, who were fighting with Molotov cocktails and small-calibre rifles.

In 1956 there was a feeling that the monolithic power of the Soviet Union might be crumbling. Khruschev, the new leader of the Soviet Union, had denounced Stalin in a so-called secret speech earlier in 1956. This led to what was initially a student revolt that was brutally put down by the Hungarian state security police. The disgust amongst the population at that act led to a general uprising that toppled the hardline regime that had been installed in Hungary after the war. The new government of Imre Nagy formally disbanded the state security police. They pledged to conduct free elections, released political prisoners and declared that Hungary would no longer be a member of the Warsaw Pact.

The Soviet response to this was a full-scale invasion that, as I said, included tanks and artillery. To ensure the loyalty of the Soviet troops, they were brought in from Central Asia and were told that they were fighting the German fascists in Berlin. They were resisted, extraordinarily courageously, by pockets of the Hungarian army, none of which sided with the Soviets, and rebels who were fighting with nothing more than Molotov cocktails and small arms. Obviously, this resistance had no hope against the might of the Warsaw Pact, although the resistance did continue sporadically until mid-1957. Two and a half thousand Hungarians died, thousands more were executed and imprisoned afterwards and 200,000 fled the country as refugees.

In what was a stunningly crude move, the Soviets granted Nagy safe passage from his refuge in the Yugoslav embassy. After granting that safe passage, they seized him, imprisoned him in Romania and Russia and finally executed him in 1958 after he refused to denounce his actions and endorse the new Soviet-sponsored regime that was installed. These events are extraordinarily important in showing us the true face of Soviet communism. Many in the West flirted with the ideals. At that stage, in fairness to them, the monumental evil of that regime was not as clear as it is today, but, after the events of 1956, no thinking person could look at that system and believe that it offered anything for mankind. There is no question that those events contributed to the ultimate collapse of that system.

Today in Hungary we have a nation transformed: it is a member of NATO and the EU. I have visited the country twice, and after 1989 you could not possibly be anything but impressed by the vibrancy that has been unleashed there. Hungarians have made a sizeable contribution to Australia. I would like to acknowledge that by acknowledging members of the Hungarian community in the House today. (Time expired)

See this speech in context