Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Deputy Speaker. A little over an hour and a half ago, I sat where you sat and listened to the contributions of the member for Fowler, the member for Calwell and the member for Boothby. That is where I would like to start: we are all coming from one space.

Being a member of parliament in this House, we are all subjected to the emails that go around about how bad Islam is and how bad Muslims are. I would like to start with a story. When the previous government had the programs about integrating or, better, exposing the Muslim faith in our communities, I went along to one in Annandale, which is an upper middle-class suburb in Townsville. We had an Imam, a Muslim scholar from Griffith University and the Muslim community in front of us. These people were university lecturers, engineers, accountants, teachers and doctors. There was not a jihadist or anything like that in the audience. An older gentleman got up and, in his language, said, 'I would like to say something', and it was translated for me. He said, 'How can you have democracy when the word 'democracy' does not appear in the Koran?' to which the Imam said, 'That's 100 per cent correct. The word 'democracy' does not appear in the Koran, but neither does the word 'chlorine' and yet you use chlorine in your pool.' The older gentleman sat down and said, 'Okay, I'll take that point.' That is where I want to go with this.

There are radicals in every religion. If you want to search hard enough, you will find things in the Old Testament that you can base your Christian beliefs on that will allow you to do just about anything you want. What I would like to do is speak to the great majority of Muslims in Australia and say, 'I understand exactly where you're coming from.' I do not agree that for every atrocity that happens overseas every Muslim in Australia must jump up and down and physically denounce it. I do not do that when a Christian shoots a girl coming out of an abortion clinic in the United States of America. I do not, as a Christian, stand up and denounce this act and say, 'As a Christian, I denounce this act.' I am not called upon to do that.

I am married to an Italian. I grew up in a small country town in south-west Queensland in the 1960s and 1970s. I know what we said about Italians and Greeks in those days. My wife turns it back on me and her family turns it back on me. They say, 'You skippies, I can hardly tell the difference between you. You all look the same to us. You all look the same.' So they have turned it on its head. But we made it very, very tough on the Italians and Greeks when they came here. They looked different, they dressed differently, they ate differently, they hung out by themselves, their families did their own thing and they did not integrate, and now I have Greeks and Italians coming to me and saying, 'We've got to get these Muslims to integrate, mate. That's what we've got to do.' That is where they come from. We did the same with the Vietnamese when they came in the 70s. We were so tough on everyone. Australians are by nature tough on the new kid on the block. That is what we do.

When the Greeks, Italians, Vietnamese, Chinese and everyone else who has come to Australia arrived, we did have entry-level jobs. We had workplace health and safety rules that meant that you could have a job in Australia and not speak English. You could still sweep the shed—no problems at all. You could still drive the forklift. You could operate the press. You could do anything. You did not have to be proficient in English. Try getting a job in a shed today, anywhere, for someone who cannot pass basic literacy. Your workplace health and safety will not let them go through. People say that those people do not work and do not integrate, but they are not able to; they want to.

A mate of mine took over from me as manager of Pickles Auctions. He had some Sudanese guys working in his detailing bay and he said he had never seen work like it. They just loved being at work. These people do want to be part of our community and we should be making it easy for them. We should not be judging an entire nation of people, an entire group of people or a religious faith, on the actions of a few.

As the member for Calwell said, we are sending our ADF personnel to places where it is dangerous. I come from Townsville, which is a defence city. We have the largest Army base in Australia. We have had significant deployments from Somalia onwards. In Iraq and Afghanistan, we had constant rotations going through. We have had condolence motions in this place for soldiers and ADF personnel who have not come home and paid the ultimate sacrifice.

We speak often in this place about post-traumatic stress disorder. In the First World War we called it shell shock; we sent them to the pub to have that cured. If they could not get there, we sent them to the fringes of society. The ADF, as an organisation, gets better every time we go away. Every time we deploy and come back we get better at it. But PTSD is the silent injury that you do not actually see. People join the ADF because they are that type of personality—because they are that strong person. Be you man or woman, you know you want to serve your country; you know what you want to do, and serve overseas is what you want to do when you pull on a uniform. When they come back, to admit that something may be wrong with them is a massive, massive effort, especially if they cannot see the injury. I think that is what we have to be very, very aware of: that we are putting people in harm's way. If we are putting people in these situations, we have to be very aware that we have to look after them when they come back, because injury is everywhere.

It is about the family as well. It is not just the soldier, airman or sailor that comes home and suffers these things; it is their entire family and it is us as a community. What we must do is put our hand out to these people and make sure that their families are taken care of. We are a great defence community in Townsville. We do do this. They are members of our sporting clubs. They are part of our community. They are on our P&Fs at schools. There are school board members. They are everything in our community, and we love them for it, but we have to make sure that we look after these people.

I continually get people saying to me that multiculturalism does not work. As I said, I am married to an Italian. Multiculturalism does not divide our country; it enriches our country. It adds layers and texture of personality to our country. I would hate to think of what we were in the 1960s, where you put the roast on on Saturday afternoon for Sunday lunch. We did not know what food is until we had new cultures come to this country. Multiculturalism is a staple of our country. It is something that we have to embrace and that we have embraced. We are at a bad point at the moment now, and a lot of people are very worried. But I think what we need to do is understand that the vast, vast majority—99.999 per cent—of people that come to this country want that better life and want the better life for their kids. I was talking to my wife about this, and I said, 'Radicalism, in these families!' because sometimes you look at these families and wonder what happened. But you also look at families where drug addiction happens; it does not pick and choose where it goes. If you are that type of personality, you can be attracted to these sorts of things. I am not saying that you are a drug addict, or anything like that, and I do not want my words misconstrued. What I am saying is that radicalism is something that happens along the way and that there is normally something else that is tied to it. I do not want to go down that path and I certainly do not want to turn our back on what Australia has become, which is, singularly, the greatest multicultural nation on the face of the earth.

We make it hard on the new kids on the block, and we make it hard on the new bloke at the game, but once they have proved their bona fides they are in. I think we make sweeping generalisations in this country about every race and nation and faith on the earth, but the thing I love about Australians is that we take the individual as they come. If you have someone move in next door to you, you do not care what colour skin they have; you go and say g'day to them. I think that is what sets us aside. That is what we have to make sure that we keep our faith in, but we have to make sure that we maintain the right for people to dress the way they want. If their faith demands that they dress a certain way then I do not see what the problem is with it. I really do not.

There are people in my community who are offended by the sight of a signet ring and people's Catholicism. My great-grandfather, when he came to Australia in 1902, was a very qualified Welsh public servant. He could not get a job in Australia because he was a Catholic. He could not get a job in the Australian Public Service because he was a Catholic. He had to convert to Anglicism. He had to convert to the Anglican Church, or the Church of England in those days, to get a job in the Public Service. Tiger O'Reilly will tell you that he did not play anywhere near as many tests for Australia because he was a Catholic and the Don was a Mason. That is what happens here. These things—divisions along religious lines—have always been there. This is no different to where we have been, but it is international. We are in this together. What I want from people in this place, and outside, is a recognition that we are in this together—that we are one Australia, and Australia is a great country. It is a country of many faiths, many opinions and many beliefs. That is what makes us great. It is what makes us great. I thank the House.

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