Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the member for Bennelong and also acknowledge that the electorate of Bennelong is one of the electorates where hate groups have been distributing some really horrific antisemitic and racially supremacist literature. In January, following the antisemitic terrorist attack, this parliament passed new laws so that organisations that had been able to evade terror listing by keeping themselves just below those thresholds were still able to be listed as prohibited hate groups. Shortly after that, we had a process which I previously reported to the parliament where we listed Hizb ut-Tahrir as a prohibited hate group.

On 15 May, the government listed the Neo-Nazis as a prohibited hate group. They've gone by a number of names: European Australian Movement, National Socialist Network, White Australia. The process for prohibiting a hate group has a high threshold, as it should, and the process has to be initiated by ASIO. There's then a ministerial decision. There's then further work that has to be done by the Attorney-General, and consultation occurs with the Leader of the Opposition. That threshold had been reached with organisations which the director-general of ASIO had previously described as at that point in time having been 'awful but lawful'. When we introduced the legislation to this parliament, at that point, the Neo-Nazis claimed that they were disbanding because of those laws. They didn't disband; they phoenixed. They went from one name to a new name, and they continued with their hateful ideology and their hateful methods of organisation.

Effectively, what the listing means is this. While we can't stop people from having horrific levels of bigotry, we do make it a criminal offence for anyone to support them, fund them, train them, recruit for them, join them or direct this group, with a series of penalties—the maximum of which reaches 15 years in prison. It sends a clear message to people who believe in racial supremacy that their views have no place in modern Australia. We are a country that judges you on who you are, not where you are from. The Neo-Nazis have gone after almost every group you can imagine: the Jewish community, the Muslim community, people of Asian heritage, First Nations Australians. They've engaged in all kinds of bigotry, but what the parliament has now done is set a standard that says: their views, their hate, has no place in modern Australia.

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