Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, member for Indi. They were beautiful words eloquently spoken, as were your words the other day prior to question time.

Detective Leading Senior Constable Neal Thompson, Senior Constable Vadim de Waart-Hottart and Queensland constables Rachel McCrow and Matthew Arnold are sadly seared into the consciousness of a bereaved nation for they have been the victims of recent tragic events where nutters, sovereign citizens and terrorists—call them what you'd like—took their lives in a burst of bullets. This is not right. This is not the way Australia should be. We live in very volatile times. But, when our police officers leave home to go and serve, they should be able to, at the end of the shift, come back home safe and sound. Police officers, like other emergency service personnel, run to danger when others, most of us, would run in the other direction. They are the bravest of the brave, and Australia is very, very well served by our police officers, by our Australian Defence Force personnel, by those who don a uniform and go and fight the good fight for and on behalf of us, by those who serve, by those who protect and by those who save. We should never forget that. Never, ever should we forget that.

I really take exception when the New South Wales police and, indeed, the New South Wales government make a request that is then ignored by an unelected judge, and I refer to Justice Belinda Rigg. Despite the fact that the brave men and women in blue and the leader thereof, the police commissioner, no less, applied for a prohibition order against an individual by the name of Josh Lees, an organiser from the Palestinian Action Group, a professional stirrer, professional protester, who wanted the Sydney Harbour Bridge used for a protest, Justice Belinda Rigg, a faceless unelected official, for whatever reason, decided that she knew better than police. And what did we see? We saw signs of hatred. We saw actions of hatred. We saw the New South Wales police have to call just about every officer they had on duty and others who should've been enjoying a day off, to monitor that particular protest.

Now what have we got? We've got the floodgates open. Everyone wants to protest on the Sydney Harbour Bridge because it's iconic, because it's internationally famous, because it's renowned. And the police are the poor ones who will have to monitor and protect and save and do what they usually do—and they'll do it without complaint. They'll do it because that's what they do in the line of duty. The likes of Justice Belinda Rigg and Lees—I'm not going to say 'Mr' because he doesn't deserve it—should not be running the show. When Premier Chris Minns and the New South Wales police commissioner, the person acting in that role, ask for a determination, they should be listened to.

The four constables I mentioned before, their lives are no different than the lives of Sergeant Michael Kennedy, Constable Thomas Lonigan, Constable Michael Scanlan, Constable Samuel Nelson, Senior Constable Ed Mostyn Webb-Bowen and Sergeant Edmund Parry. Those names, in one sense, will never be lost to history either. They were killed by bushrangers. In Australia, we sometimes romanticise the outlaws of the 19th century. Ned Kelly and his gang killed three Victorian police officers at Stringybark Creek. Samuel Nelson lost his life at Collector, killed by John Dunn. Senior Constable Webb-Bowen lost his life in the battle at Wantabadgery, where the Moonlite gang was holed up. And Sergeant Edmund Parry was shot dead by Johnny Gilbert near Jugiong way back in 1864. They lost their lives in the long line of duty.

As we've heard from the member for Indi, there is a long line of blue that stretches all the way to the Australian National Police Memorial. We will remember them near the end of this month, 29 September. Not only will we remember the service and sacrifice of those who gave their lives; we will reflect upon the dangers of those who go out each and every day to ensure the safety of society, not helped by judges who turn a blind eye to the requests—the decent requests, the honest requests, the sensible demands of the New South Wales Premier and the person tasked with leading the New South Wales Police. That is a great shame. That is to the detriment of society. I don't understand why—particularly in a society which at the moment is very fractured and volatile.

No-one denies people have the right to protest, but, when they are protesting, they do not—absolutely do not—have the right to take placards and pictures of the person responsible for the deaths of those two police officers at Porepunkah, an alpine town in north-east Victoria which at the moment is mourning. I very much adhere to the words of acting South Australian police commissioner Linda Williams, who told ABC radio Adelaide of the charge against the individual who put himself in it for holding a placard showing the alleged police killer. It will now be tested before the courts.

Here is the challenge for those courts: make good on what you should be doing when you took the oath to serve justice, just like our police officers. This individual who held up that placard at the time of volatility in society should be thrown behind bars. Will that person be? There's the test for the courts. There are a few test for the courts at the moment. There's one more local which I won't refer to. People don't have to do much of a Google search to find it. But these are tests for the courts, and we shouldn't be promoting sovereign citizens. They are terrorists. We shouldn't be promoting Nazism. We shouldn't be promoting people who kill our police, our brave officers. I say that as the father of a brave officer.

I can remember one day when Scott Morrison and I had done something particularly noteworthy during a time of crisis in this country. We were reflecting upon it, and my son on that occasion had talked a very vulnerable person out of doing themselves in. I told the then prime minister, and he said, 'That will be far greater than anything we do today or perhaps ever.' That's what police do all the time. It's in their DNA. As parliamentarians, we should be very proud of our police officers. I commend those parliamentarians now who were serving officers in the past. I know that they are now representing and doing their duty in a different space in a different phase of their lives. I thank each and every one of them. I sit beside one of them, the member for Wide Bay.

Thank you to everybody who pulls on a uniform. We honour you, we pay tribute to you and we will always do our very best to uphold what you do for us, and that is to save lives.

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