Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

For the last few years, I have lived the change and the targeting of my community. I have lived and woken up to pictures on my phone of my own office being set alight. There isn't a day that goes by that doesn't have images of either me, my colleagues or my community online with the worst connotations and the worst sort of bigotry and blood libels attached to our community. This is a complicated and wicked problem that for too many people has risen to the surface of our society due to tensions that are going on on the other side of the world. It is difficult to manage; there is no doubt. What is required is diligence and a focus on the issues to try to work through ways in which we can combat them in the best way forward. That is a difficult task, and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't. It does nothing, though, to bring motions into this place to try to sow doubt in the minds of the people that we are seeking to protect and have taken unprecedented steps this week to protect in the interests of not just the Jewish community but all Australians. To then somehow say that this government isn't taking seriously the scourge of antisemitism, what does that achieve in this place right now?

When we take the unprecedented step, for the first time since World War II, of expelling the Iranian diplomatic representation in Australia and we announce our intention to list the IRGC as a terrorist organisation, that is not the end of the matter. There are Iranian Australians who are thinking about their families in Iran right now. There are people from the Iranian community who I was on the phone to when Israel and Iran were at war who were so frightened for their families seeking to leave that country, and I had to tell those people, 'We are trying, but it is very hard because we just don't have enough resources on the ground.' Imagine what we are telling that community and those people right now, today—that we have pulled Australian representation out of that country. The things that we are doing are not just for the political benefit of the House of Representatives to go and put it on a media release or on a social media platform. These are real and hard decisions that we have to weigh up—all the different things that affect so many different communities and Australians that we seek to protect.

I would say to those opposite: imagine if, today, you came into this place and said, 'Actually, we are here to support the government; we're not going to try and pretend that a Senate committee recommending to list an entire military operation connected to the ayatollahs of Iran which has 125,000 members is somehow an adequate piece of advice for the Australian government to list the IRGC.' No. It takes security advice compiled by ASIO and other security agencies for the Australian government to reach that threshold, as is appropriate. It is not appropriate that we would take the advice from a Senate committee that's not set up by or invested in government security agencies. It is appropriate that we do it with the full cooperation of people who have information that is not privy to every single member of this House.

I would also say to those opposite that in somehow diminishing that and making this about the Prime Minister—for goodness sake!—how transparent are your intentions? What did that achieve at the last election? For two years, while October 7th happened and the consequences that were felt by the Jewish community were real and were devastating, instead of trying to sow doubt, you could have been constructive. Be constructive. Come to us with ideas that you think will work, and, if they aren't feasible, then we will give that feedback as well. But don't pretend that just because you say something it means that that has to happen, and don't pretend that there aren't serious considerations that mean you would do exactly the same thing. In nine years, those opposite didn't list the IRGC as a terrorist organisation. They did not do that.

The final thing I would say in this debate—and the member for Berowra knows this—is that you only have to walk down the streets of Glen Eira Road and Hotham Street to see the Adass community walking. It is an amazing amalgamation of tradition and modernity walking on the streets. The way that that community has behaved with dignity, class and resilience is exactly the sort of example that I seek to have followed, not making this a cheap political contest, which it should never, ever be.

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