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

Three thousand police. Snipers on the roof. A ring of steel around the central business district of Sydney. Workers, visitors, residents told to stay either at home or away. What is going on in this country? How has it gotten to this? The visit by Israeli President Isaac Herzog has been greeted with remarkable scenes not just in Sydney, not just in Melbourne, but in Wagga Wagga and Benalla. This has to stop. It simply must stop.

I'm not quite sure indeed what these people are still protesting about. I have nothing against peaceful demonstrations. It's part and parcel of living in a democracy. But the Australian government's adherence to Palestinian statehood was announced on 11 August last year. It was formally recognised on 21 September last year. I disagreed with it, but this is what the United Nations and our nation did and followed through on. And yet still we're seeing protests week after week, day after day in our capital cities and in our country cities. And for what? I just don't understand it.

Some of them are saying, 'Well, they're peaceful demonstrations.' No, they're not, because if you talk to the officers who are engaged with babysitting these people, they will tell you that these people throw things at them—anything they can lay their hands on—and they spit at them. Where have we got to as a country? Why is this happening? They would be far better off volunteering their time at a soup kitchen, attending a cancer hospice, doing anything but what they're doing.

I spoke to Labor New South Wales Minister for Police and Counter-terrorism Yasmin Catley on Friday night. She's doing a good job under tremendous pressure. So too, I have to say, is Premier Chris Minns. He has shown leadership against all of this. Thank goodness we have Mal Lanyon in as the police commissioner, because he has requested, and rightly so, extensions to prohibitions on these protests.

Then, of course, we've got the Teachers Federation and others involved in teaching our children using—I should say abusing—Bluey, a much-loved children's character, to promote their propaganda, their river to the sea. I don't get it. I'm sorry, I just don't. I do not understand how and why these people think it's right that they can use Australian icons like Bluey, the opera house or the Sydney Harbour Bridge to promote their hatred, their spite, particularly after what went on on 14 December, when 15 beautiful, innocent lives were taken—and there is a correlation. Make no mistake, there is a correlation. It might be alright for some commentators on the ABC to argue that there might not be, but there is.

I would urge and encourage people to read the op-ed in the Daily Telegraph today by Paul Nicolaou, who is a leading advocate in the Sydney business community. He, like so many in Melbourne, has had a gutful of the protests which have such an impact on those small businesses in the CBDs of those two cities. In Melbourne they've had more than 100 protests week after week after week. And for what? Holding that city at ransom and those businesses which take risks, which invest—those people, those protesters, would be far better off doing something good for a change and keeping their hate to themselves. They don't need it all. Australia's better than this.

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