Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to commend this motion. Obviously, a lot of very heartfelt speeches have been made today. There's been a lot of grief and trauma in this chamber today. We've had survivors and families of the victims here, and we respect and pay our acknowledgements to them.

What happened on 14 December is not uncommon around the world, but it's certainly more uncommon in Australia. We literally had evil, in its worst form, walking on the soil of Bondi. I know that everyone in this chamber has struggled to get their head around the idea that two men felt that it was okay, because of their hatred of a certain religion, to walk to a public space—a very iconic place in Australia, too, Bondi Beach, and I'm sure the choice was very purposeful—and randomly shoot people they didn't know. Two men felt it was okay to randomly shoot a 10-year-old girl and to randomly shoot defenceless old people, and they felt that it was a good thing to do. It's quite horrific to think that there are people who have that much hate in their heart. In this case, they were Islamic extremists, who hate some people because of their religious practices and beliefs. Australia has changed forever. Bondi has changed everything, and I'm sure a lot of us agree on that.

Going back two years to the terrible and barbaric attack on Israel by Hamas—I know the two attacks are very different and not comparable, but I think some of the thought processes may be aligned—we had men who went into Israel and were randomly killing, raping women and even delimbing people. I have seen some of the graphics of that. People had their limbs cut off in front of their family members—a horrendous and horrific act. I was shocked when, a couple of nights later, there were people celebrating that at the opera house. I think that was a bit of a wake-up call for all of us. There are lots of forms of evil, but there's a form of evil in our country called Islamic extremism. Islamic extremists hate people of a certain different religion. We have to acknowledge that. In acknowledging that, we can arm ourselves to do what we need to do to combat it.

Bondi, as I said, is an iconic and famous geographic setting in Australia. I think that choice was purposeful. And Hannukah, as we know, is a Jewish celebration of light over darkness, so there's irony in that. I had prearranged, a week or two before, to be in Sydney on the Tuesday after the Chanukah by the Sea event, so I was in Sydney and went to Bondi. I know the member opposite, who lives close by in Randwick, would have been to Bondi very soon after the attack. You could feel the grief. You could feel an emotion in the air, almost coming from the clouds. It was oppressive. There was a lot of trauma there. I bumped into people who'd been there on the Sunday and had been through exceptionally traumatic events, helping children and victims who had been shot. It was quite eerie, too, like one of those terrible scenes from a movie. It was a crime scene, as you know, so there were bikes and cars just randomly left behind. The tape was still up and you couldn't move anything at that stage. You could see cars and other things in the area with bullet holes in them. Nothing had been moved. It was very traumatic just being there. Some of the stories were very disturbing. At the same time, though, there were some very uplifting moments, and I do want to finish on a positive note. There was spontaneous singing of the national anthem. There was spontaneous singing of 'Waltzing Matilda', because of one of the victims having the name Matilda, and the reason she had that name.

There is much to do. There is good and evil in this world. Good and evil have been in the world for thousands of years, and antisemitism has been in the world for thousands of years. You only need to read the Old Testament to get a concept of antisemitism and how prevalent it's been in the world for thousands of years—World War II being a recent example of antisemitic behaviours. There was that as well. I commend this motion and give my love and wishes to the Jewish community in our country.

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