Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Macnamara for his question and I acknowledge his recent statements on this matter. What we saw on the steps of the Victorian parliament on the weekend was abhorrent. There is no place in Australian society for public displays of Nazi symbols or the Nazi salute. These are markers of some of the darkest days in the world's history—of ghettos, deportations and mass murder—which touched my own family. Six million Jews perished in the Holocaust. We must never, ever forget. And thousands of Australian service men and women died fighting the Nazi regime.

Sadly, the sort of behaviour we saw on the weekend and its accompanying antisemitism is on the rise in Australia and around the world. The Victorian government was swift in its response. The Premier condemned the behaviour of a group of cowardly black-clad men who travelled to Melbourne's CBD seeking notoriety. The Victorian Attorney-General pledged to reform Victorian law to ban displays of the Nazi salute. And, when it was revealed that Victorian Liberal MP Moira Deeming had attended the protest, the Victorian opposition leader announced that he would move to expel Ms Deeming from the Liberal Party.

But what have we had from those opposite—in particular their leader? Complete silence. We all know that bigotry and hatred breed in silence.

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