Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on this matter of public importance as an Australian who watched his country's safety be degraded by a government that never, ever gets it right. They never, ever get it right. They always need to be dragged kicking and screaming into doing the right thing. For more than two years, the government ignored warnings from the Persian community, from the Jewish community and from the coalition about the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and about Iran more generally. Firebombings and terror were the result. In the last 28 hours, the government has finally admitted what Jewish Australians, Persian Australians and the opposition have warned of for years: the Iranian regime is a criminal, wildly antisemitic regime that is targeting Australians in Australia.

I wish I could give the Prime Minister the praise he is looking for for his work on antisemitism. I really do. But I can't. I wish the government had demonstrated the leadership of the Labor premier of New South Wales, Chris Minns, who but for his slowness to act on the Sydney Opera House protest has since that time always been on the front foot in dealing with antisemitism and community safety. He is an example of a Labor leader who gets it right.

I am sad that, every time I raise questions that reflect the views of my electorate, where I represent the fourth-largest Persian community in the country, or the Jewish community, of which I'm a proud member, I get accused of playing politics with this issue. It is our duty as the opposition to hold the government to account. It is my duty as a member of this parliament to represent the views of my electorate. It is my duty as a Jewish Australian to stand up for the Jewish community and for the safety of all Australians. I wish the government would get on the front foot when it comes to these issues, but again and again and again they've had to be dragged kicking and screaming to get things right. Their failure to take action on the IRGC and on the Iranian embassy has led, sadly, to firebombings, to arson and to widespread fear in our community.

It is the first duty of government to protect its citizens. That means acting to keep threats at bay before they become a problem. That means looking at what some of our like-minded partners around the world are doing—places like Canada and the United States—and challenging our own thinking. That means listening to your agencies but being prepared to exercise independent judgement and being prepared to change the law when the law needs to be changed.

When we look at the IRGC and we look at Iran, we see everything changed in 2022 with the murder of Mahsa Amini. The murder of Mahsa Amini and the Woman, Life, Freedom movement brought protests to our streets in Australia, with Iranian Australians and Australians of other backgrounds demanding reform, justice and human rights following the violations that occurred in Iran.

Those protests led to an inquiry by the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee, led by my extraordinary colleague Claire Chandler, who did a fantastic job standing up for the Persian community in this country, standing up for law-abiding Australians and drawing the attention of the country to these issues. It's worth having a look at what that committee report said about the Iranian embassy:

The committee received evidence that Iranian embassies around the world have been used to facilitate a range of illegal behaviour including terrorism activity. The inquiry also received a number of submissions outlining the credible fears that Iranian embassies are used to facilitate the monitoring, surveillance and intimidation of critics of the … regime. The Australian Government should have no hesitation in expelling any members of the Iranian embassy deemed to be involved in or facilitating such behaviour.

For more than a year we have called for the Iranian ambassador to go, because of his extraordinary antisemitic comments and the fact that he has been part of the degradation of social unity in this country. While we've been doing that, Labor luminaries like former foreign minister Bob Carr have been lining up for happy snaps and photo ops with the Iranian ambassador.

On the IRGC, the committee said this:

The committee acknowledges the body of evidence on the IRGC's support and facilitation of terrorism. It also acknowledges that there is significant fear of the IRGC in the Iranian-Australian community—a fear which is founded in the clear evidence that the IRGC operates well beyond Iran's borders with the express purpose of threatening, intimidating and committing acts of violence against individuals it believes threatens its ideology. The IRGC is a terrorist organisation and should be recognised as such. Doing so would not just send the right message—

This is the important bit—

it would better empower agencies in Australia to place a greater focus on the IRGC's activities and operations …

So we should have been listing the IRGC two years ago. In February 2023, when I was last shadow Attorney-General, I stood at this dispatch box and offered the opposition's support to make any changes to the criminal law of Australia to facilitate the listing of the IRGC. That was 2½ years ago. My colleagues wrote to the government offering our support in written form, and the government rejected those offers.

Yesterday we heard the extraordinary news that the Iranian regime has attempted to commit criminal terrorist acts on our own soil, targeting Australians, firebombing a synagogue and blowing up and burning down the Lewis delicatessen in Bondi. Australians could have been killed. There were Australians praying in the Adass Israel synagogue at the very time the firebombing went on. This is extraordinary.

We know from the director-general of ASIO that this is just the beginning. There are more actions that Iran has been involved in. The point here is that the government took 2½ years to act. It took ASIO to drag the government, kicking and screaming, to act. We offered support 2½ years ago to make the changes to the law that were necessary in order to make sure that the IRGC was listed, and we called repeatedly for the Iranian ambassador to go.

The sadness of what has happened under this government's watch is that this is part of a pattern that we've seen again and again from this government. It has had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do things to protect law-abiding Australians—in particular, the Jewish community. And I'm fed up with it. I'm fed up, as a Jewish Australian, with being served the crumbs from the table of this government. Again and again, this government has let law-abiding Australians down.

The Prime Minister boasted about the appointment of Jillian Segal as the special envoy. We'd never had an envoy before, but we'd never had to have an envoy before the extraordinary increases in antisemitism—increases of over 700 per cent that occurred under this government. It's just extraordinary. It's one thing to appoint the envoy, but again and again and again this government has ignored the recommendations of the envoy. It ignored the recommendations of the envoy to have a judicial inquiry into antisemitism on campus. What happens on campus today, as I've said many times in this place, is so important. It's not just important for Jewish Australians; it is important for all Australians, because universities are the place where the next generation of leaders go to be formed. If we say to the next generation of leaders that antisemitism is acceptable and it can go about unanswered, then we are setting our country up for a very bleak future.

Just this week, this government voted again against measures to deal with antisemitism on campus. The special envoy presented her report two months ago. It wasn't a report full of government actions; it was a work plan for the special envoy. And the government has not committed to adopting this report. The government has not committed to supporting every single one of those recommendations, despite having it for two months. Surely, the events of yesterday, in hearing the way in which the Jewish community has yet again been targeted in antisemitic attacks led by the Iranian regime, its thugs and criminal proxies in this country, should wake this government up to do something about the antisemitism in this country.

This isn't the only example. The Prime Minister boasted about the Nazi symbols and salutes bill. We in the opposition put forward the Nazi symbols and salutes bill before the government, and they voted against our bill and they put their bill up. This government at the beginning of the year had to be dragged, again, kicking and screaming to adopt mandatory minimum sentences for hate crimes in this country. It's just extraordinary that this government would have to be dragged kicking and screaming for mandatory minimum sentences. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming to hold a National Cabinet on antisemitism, again, despite it being a recommendation from the special envoy. What did the National Cabinet do? It found that they merely should set up a database—a database that the Jewish community had been keeping for years.

On every occasion when this government has been tested, on every occasion, this government has been found wanting. They have had to be dragged kicking and screaming, again and again, and the Australian people are fed up with it. We want our streets back. We want our country back. We want the rule of law to be maintained, and we want law-abiding Australians, whatever their background, to enjoy the full benefits of the law. (Time expired)

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