Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

I'm happy to support the spirit of this motion. It isn't just a motion about our solidarity with the people of Iran; it's also about our solidarity with all people everywhere who want to live in freedom and safety, avoiding the tyranny of extremism, Islamic extremism, and oppression as occurs under the IRGC in Iran.

You just need to look at some pretty brutal realities. We currently have tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people on the streets of Iran standing up for a basic thing, which is their right to be able to determine their own future, to be able to make a choice about how they are going to live out their lives free from the oppression of the government that wants to impose a radical form of religious theocracy to enforce people to conform. We know what happens to women; we know what happens to homosexuals; we know what happens to other minority groups. And it's not just those groups as the IRGC seek to export their terrorism around the world. We've seen, in the case of Australia, where they have financed directly and engaged in state-sponsored terrorism against synagogues in Melbourne. We also know they have a direct connection with the illegal tobacco trade, which they used to finance attacks on our soil. Tragically, some government policies assist them in that process of profiteering from the practice, to use it to promote things like antisemitism and violence against Australians of Jewish heritage. We know the consequences that have befallen the people who have chosen to stand up against the mullahs in Tehran; 30,000 odd people have been reported. We know full well that they continue to target people, shut down pathways to communicate with the rest of the world and stop us all bearing witness to the horrors of the IRGC.

What's tragic about this situation, more than anything else, is we have known for a long time that this situation would come. We know the IRGC simply takes power through force, and that's why we wanted to list them as a terrorist organisation in the last term of parliament. I remember when I was involved in the listing of Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organisations, it was a relatively straightforward process. To this day, it is still distressing that it took the firebombing of synagogues, sponsored by the Iranian government, for our government to act and acknowledge the IRGC and its state-sponsored terrorism as a threat, not just to Australia but to the international community.

Now we face a choice about how we're going to respond. We know that this challenge is going to be one where we have to stand by the Iranian people at every step. Last week I stood on the steps of Parliament House and spoke at a protest. I spoke specifically about how disappointing it is that so many people who used to flood the capital cities of our nation for the victims of the Israel Hamas conflict—one where terrorist organisations attack the free state and then that free state chooses to respond to defend their citizens. And make no mistake: all civilian deaths are a tragedy; it does not matter the context in which it occurred. I spoke about how so many of those people went out into the streets and stood up for the civilian victims of Gaza—and fair enough, they have every right to do so—yet we have seen a conspicuous conspiracy of silence from the same core group within the community about the 30,000 people who have been murdered by the IRGC in Iran. They have not stood up for the people of Iran, and we need to call this out because it highlights the double standard and Jew hatred that occurs within some sections of the community if they won't stand up against the oppression of the Iranian people.

Now is the time people are rising up and now is the time that we must stand by them. We must, of course, support them in their actions as much as possible and give them comfort and hope. And to those people in Australia who have family members on the frontline standing up against the Iranian government, you have our sympathy and our support. I've had people from the Iranian community in Goldstein, as well as from across the country, contact me and say, 'Please keep speaking up on this, because it matters to the people behind the Tehran curtain.'

Now is the time for us to stand up and to be called to account; now is the time for all of us to show solidarity where it belongs. The consequence, if the Iranian people are successful—and of course we always look for opportunities where we can intervene to support them in achieving their shared objective of self-determination—is we will have an Iran that is free of the mullahs and their tyrannical regime, a world where we're less likely to have radical extremist ideology that seeks to oppress people and less state-sponsored terrorism in Iran, in the region and around the world. But if we fail, we know there will be a perpetuation of those terrors and those horrors on the people who have done nothing more than want to stand up and say they want their voice, their freedom, and to decide their future.

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