Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

When it comes to national security and when it comes to the key responsibility of government to keep our citizens safe, we in this place often speak with one voice and we often come to the same conclusions about these very important issues, but we do so bringing here many different perspectives. And our perspectives are formed and forged by our own experiences, by our reading and our understanding of history, and by the values and principles that we bring to this place. My own perspective in some of these discussions comes from my own multicultural community based around the northern end of Logan City and the southern suburbs of Brisbane. I acknowledge my colleague the member for Forde, who represents another big portion of Logan City. I consider myself blessed to represent such a multicultural community. I consider myself blessed to have people from so many different backgrounds and so many different faiths residing in the area that I grew up in, and the area that I now represent.

I know, from almost four decades of living in a place like mine, that the overwhelming majority of people from different faiths and different backgrounds want to live there in peace. They want to do the right thing. They make a tremendously positive contribution to my community. Local families just want to see that their kids have opportunities and they want to see that their kids are safe. They want for their kids what families across all of the faiths want for their kids: they want to see people's aspirations rewarded and they want to see people getting along with each other in a spirit of harmony.

It is certainly true to say that today, because of a combination of what is happening overseas and what is happening at home, my community is edgy. That edginess is based on, as I said, what is happening in northern Iraq, in Syria and in other parts of the world, and also on what is happening in activities in my own community, my own local community. Members might be aware that some of the AFP raids, for example, that have been undertaken in the last month or so—not the majority of those raids, but some of them—have taken place in some of the suburbs of my electorate, and I did want to take the opportunity to pay tribute to the Australian Federal Police for the professionalism that they show when they conduct these sorts of activities. I was very pleased to be able to receive a briefing quite recently from the AFP about some of these activities. I want to acknowledge and put on the record my thanks to Minister Keenan for facilitating those briefings that enabled me to get a better understanding of some of the actions that have taken place in my own community in the last little while. I also want to pay tribute to the AFP, not just for the way that they conduct some of those sorts of events but for the way that they do try to engage with the various communities of all faiths in my electorate of Rankin.

Of course, it is not just people who are doing the wrong thing who are shaken by all of this—they should be shaken by all of this—but also a lot of people who are doing the right thing. We have unfortunately seen an increase in incidents in my area against people of different faiths—of the Muslim faith. It is important that we condemn any of that sort of activity. We have had incidents at the local mosque, for example, and we need to make sure that we condemn that sort of activity, just as we condemn in the strongest possible terms some of the harsh language that comes from the other extreme in this national conversation that we are having right now.

I was pleased to join Muslim friends at the mosque open day a couple of Fridays ago. We do need to be putting that sort of effort into educating people about the different faiths. I congratulate not just the people from the mosques but also the people from the local community who went along to discuss some of these issues in a spirit of understanding and a spirit of openness. It was a very successful day, and we should see more of those sorts of efforts made to understand each other.

The link between what is happening here in our own community and what is happening overseas in northern Iraq and in Syria are the so-called foreign fighters. It is very difficult for us to understand what would take hold of somebody, who, having lived in Australia and called it home, would want to pack up and go overseas to participate in this awful conflict on the side of the thugs who are conducting this genocidal activity in the Middle East. It is hard for us to understand what would make a young Australian person want to follow the directions of these cowards that we see on YouTube videos and elsewhere. It is hard to imagine what took hold of the young 18-year-old man in Melbourne, for example, who was arrested for the incident in the last fortnight or so. I want to repeat the words of my leader, Bill Shorten, who I think spoke very eloquently about this topic. He said, and I quote:

Whatever problems you may perceive that you have, violence is not the solution. Whatever you think is wrong with the world, extremism and fanaticism will never make it right. We do need to discourage and disrupt extreme behaviour, fanatic behaviour, at all levels. We need to make sure that we take a broad approach to that; not just in terms of crime prevention or the activities of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies, but a much broader approach that looks at things like marginalisation, and that makes sure that we are attacking disadvantage where it exists.

In that context, I was very pleased to have a discussion with Muslim leaders yesterday in this place. They were here as part of the Centre for Dialogue's Muslim Leadership Program at La Trobe University. We did discuss some of these issues, including marginalisation of young people.

On the other side of the world, the situation in Iraq is heartbreaking for people like us and people around the country who have arguably spent the best part of a decade debating that country, Iraq, and the various missteps that were part of the US-led activity there that began in 2003. For a previous generation—the baby-boomer generation—the Vietnam war was the defining foreign policy event. For my generation, I think it is fair to say, that the defining foreign policy debacle was really the Iraq war. My leaders—Bill Shorten and Tanya Plibersek—have gone through why they think that the 2003 intervention is different to the humanitarian intervention we are making now. I will not repeat those arguments, but it is fair to say that this is a very different situation now.

We support this deployment. We anticipate another announcement very soon after the deliberations of the National Security Committee of cabinet and we will play a constructive role in all of those conversations. Our positive contribution is to put boundaries around the sort of support that we are prepared to provide. Again, Bill Shorten has outlined those in detail. We can also make a contribution as individual politicians to improve the understanding of all of these issues and not diminish the understanding of these issues. It is worth noting that Senator Lambie and Senator Bernardi's comments are particularly unhelpful in this context. They are divisive. I do not think that they are well motivated. It is incumbent on all of us—I do not tar all of the government with that brush—to try and improve the understanding in our community and not diminish it.

These are really serious times. We approach these challenges calmly and with purpose. The same goes for how we approach the National Security Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2014 that is currently before the House. How we approach that task really centres on what the Prime Minister has described as 'the delicate balance' between security and freedom. Evaluating this balance has been a question confronting political philosophers for centuries. It is a question that thinkers as diverse as Locke, Hobbes, de Tocqueville and Benjamin Franklin have all weighed in on and disagreed on in the usual way. It is hard for us to strike that perfect balance between security and liberty or even to accept that that simplistic view that those two things are unnecessarily at odds. It is not necessarily true that there is a direct trade-off between security and civil liberties. The reality is that liberty and security is not a zero-sum game. After all, personal security is—as Hobbes would have argued—itself a critically important liberty to be defended. Human security depends on respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms to be upheld. When we analyse the legislation that is before the House, and the other pieces of legislation that will come before us in the coming months, we need to keep these fundamental principles in mind. When we agree to legislation which restricts certain civil liberties, we must do so with confidence that the resulting gain in security and related freedoms is sufficiently large to make it worthwhile.

Legislation is just one aspect of the government's approach, and of course there are other jobs for us to do. I was thinking, when I was preparing my remarks for today, that our job is really, as Bobby Kennedy said all those years ago when he quoted the Greeks, 'to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world'.

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