Tania Lawrence (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Matilda; Edith Brutman; Dan Elkayam; Boris and Sofia Gurman; Alexander Kleytman; Rabbi Yaakov Levitan; Peter Meagher; Reuven Morrison; Marika Pogany; Rabbi Eli Schlanger; Adam Smyth; Boris Tetleroyd; Tania Tretiak; Tibor Weitzen—15 Australians for whom today should be, as the Prime Minister said, just another Monday morning. It is not, nor is it the same for those left behind, for the close family and friends of those so brutally taken away—people like six-year-old Summer, who now lives with the trauma of seeing her big sister murdered—for the extraordinary people who were present and who survived, for those who ran to danger and for those like Amy Booth who responded to it.

We meet here now to do something tangible: to guard against this tragedy being repeated and, as my friend the member for Macarthur said earlier, to root out the underlying causes of the rise in hatred and antisemitism. My electorate of Hasluck is rich in cultural diversity and rich in religious diversity. Over the last four years, I've been a regular visitor to the many churches, temples, mosques, schools and religious institutions around Hasluck, and one thing that has always struck me is the goodwill that exists between them and the active demonstration of the pluralistic Australian values within our community at large.

The Shree Swaminarayan Temple and the Sikh gurdwara in Bennett Springs are fine examples of this. Each of them feeds not only many in its own community, on a regular basis, but also the many families in need in Hasluck and beyond, regardless of faith or ethnicity, particularly at times of natural disasters. In any given week, there is a proud and open celebration of faith in my electorate of Hasluck, as it should be.

Recently I was invited, and readily accepted the invitation, to attend the Hanukkah prayers for the fallen and the lighting of the menorah, and I attended a service for the sabbath and a wedding, with the traditional calling of the groom to the Torah.

Our Jewish community, like any other, has the right to expect to be able to observe their faith and carry out their lives in peace and without anxiety, and yet they cannot. My local Jewish leaders told me that, when the attack at Bondi was happening, Hanukkahs were being held concurrently across New South Wales and around the country and, as messages were being sent out about the shooters, there was confusion as to whether they were also under attack. No-one, of course, could know whether this was a lone attack or part of a wider attack. The Jewish leaders told me of the panic and the fear that was felt at every Hanukkah, and earlier we heard our member for Macnamara sharing his own experience and his fear for his daughter's safety. This brings home just how vulnerable and how unsafe our Jewish community feels.

Heavy and visible security presence, CCTV, high walls—these fortifications and layers of security have become normalised. It is not normal. I am shocked and I'm deeply saddened for our Jewish Australians to live in a constant state of fear in our neighbourhoods. Racism, antisemitism and intolerance have no place in Australia, nor in any democratic society. Every major religion preaches peace. When violent extremists attack unknown innocents in the pursuit of their own twisted political or ideological beliefs it is more than just a crime; it is an attack on the underlying principles of Australia as a whole. As was put to me recently at a roundtable I attended with our Jewish leaders in Perth, this horrific act—this hateful act of terrorism—our collective response and the actions that follow will be marked in history and studied and judged for decades to come.

The government I am part of is committed to combating antisemitism and to addressing the underlying cause in the rise of racism. As the Prime Minister has said, this is not now a time for division. It's a time for unity, for coming together and for encouraging fairness, respect and kindness across all society. Let the respect we all show be the bedrock upon which we move together from this tragedy. As the Hanukkah celebration teaches, the light will overcome the darkness.

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