Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly I thank the member for McPherson for bringing this motion before the House. Right around the world, there would be a lot of public sympathy for victims of terrorism over the last four or five decades. Indeed, it has become almost part and parcel of the world we live in today that, all too often, innocent people—men, women and children—are mercilessly killed by people that don't even know them, people that they have never seen and people to whom they have never done anything wrong.

I particularly want to use this occasion to talk about two of those victims. One was Angela Golotta, a 19-year-old Australian whom I knew personally and whose family I know personally, who was killed in the Bali bombings on 12 October 2002 in the Sari Club. Angela was there with her mother, her father and her brother, holidaying in Bali at the time of the bombing. Her parents and her brother had just left the Sari Club to go back to their hotel, when, a few minutes later, they heard the bombing—Angela had remained back at the Sari Club for a few more minutes—and raced back to the club.

I can recall listening to the story of her father, John Golotta, who was talking about the horrific carnage that he had walked into. I believe he was, in fact, the first person to set foot into the Sari Club after the bombing—seeing the bodies on the floor, some still alive, many dead, with him calling out for his daughter. It is something that I'm sure he will never, ever forget, not only because his daughter was there but also because of the carnage he saw. I know that every year, on the anniversary date, it's a very sad occasion for his family, particularly when other community and family events arise and she is no longer with them—a young 19-year-old who had the future ahead of her and was tragically taken.

The second person whom I also knew very well was Andrew Knox. Andrew was killed in the Twin Towers disaster in the US on 11 September 2001. I can recall Andrew, before he went to America to take up his new posting, meeting with me only weeks before he left Australia. He then went to take up that new posting. On the day of the Twin Towers disaster—or only the next morning, I think—I can recall getting a telephone call from a very close friend of his, telling me that Andrew was one of the people in the building and about Andrew's last conversation with this person, who was relaying the information to me. Indeed, I believe Andrew was on the phone, trying to make contact with his own family, at the time. I attended Andrew's funeral, which was very well supported in Adelaide. Again, I look back at both Andrew and Angela and I see two young people—Andrew was 29—who genuinely had a tremendous future ahead of them and whose lives came to an end in those two disasters.

When I think of both of them, I also think of the literally thousands of people who have, over the years, lost their lives. Many of them I don't know, and most of us in this room would not know them, but to their families the same applies. Sadly, it seems to me that, because terrorist activities seem to happen all too often, it's now almost become simply another statistic. The reality is that for those people it is not a statistic; it's a real human life that has been lost. I say that in the context that we, as people of this world and with our fellow people around the world, need to do whatever we can to try and prevent more atrocities from happening.

Almost on a weekly basis, we hear in the USA of shootings, even in places like kindergartens and schools where innocent children are going about their daily lives. Parents send them to a place where they think that they will be safe and that they will see them at the end of the day. When I think about that and think of my own children and now my grandchildren and think it could have been one of our children that didn't come home, I can understand the feelings and the emotions they must go through. It is not just for those people who have lost their lives that lives change; for their families, lives change forever as well. So I say to the members of this House that we must collectively do whatever we can to prevent those kinds of atrocities.

I thank the first responders—not just our law enforcement agencies for the tremendous work they do but also those people who, when something like this happens, when there is an horrific act of terrorism, are the first ones on the scene to see what happens and pick up the pieces. So I give them all my thanks.

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