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

Speaker, I too acknowledge your 10 years, and each and every other member who was elected in 2016. I well remember that election campaign. It was very cold. It was a very cold winter. It was a very long campaign. But the parliament was made better by the people who came into this place then. I think we all come to this parliament with a view to making our communities better, for a start, and to making our society better and to making our nation stronger. That said, I think standards are important in the federal chamber. I think it's good that the winter recess is now upon us, because I think we all need to take a deep breath and reflect upon those standards over winter. There's been a bit of faux outrage, a bit of confected indignation, today.

But I was disappointed by the Minister for Defence Industry in relation to his comments at the National Press Club. I've given speeches at the National Press Club, and, like in the parliament, you need to have the right tone. You need to have the right message. You need to have the right narrative. To suggest for a moment that former prime minister Menzies was anything other than a patriot I think is a step too far. I don't think it is, in the national debate, right just at the moment—at any time.

The Prime Minister has for some months been telling us to bring the temperature down, and I don't disagree with the Prime Minister in those sentiments, because we all need to reflect on our language. We are leaders in this nation, and our messages are important because they reach a lot of people. There are a lot of Australians out there at the moment who are very angry, and, when there is anger, there is unfortunately a race to the bottom when it comes to healthy debate. I don't need to remind the House about the sovereign citizen movement and what that can do to Australia and the nature and discourse of debate. We've seen all too often our police being shown utter disrespect.

When we as leaders make comments about former prime ministers—and we can go through each and every former prime minister's tone and language, but we're in 2026 and we need to be better than that. We absolutely do, I think.

We are also in the midst of an antisemitism royal commission, and I think whatever we say in here and outside is really important, given some of the harrowing evidence at that particular inquiry. I note the member for Macnamara's presence in the chamber, and I note too his comments before that inquiry, in other motions before this place and in the media about the need to ensure that people in Australia feel safe. It's really important that Jewish Australians who have contributed mightily to this nation over many decades feel safe in this country. It is not right that children going to a childcare centre have to have additional security, that children going to cricket practice in Melbourne have to have additional security—quite frankly, any security at all—or that people worshipping at their synagogues have to have armed guards outside, protecting them when coming in and out of that particular place of worship. We have to be better.

We know that the darkest chapter in history was the Nazis' extermination of six million Jews, and we must never, ever forget that. We must never, ever fall into being a society that allows anything about Hitler, about the Nazis and about their evil regime and the Holocaust to be forgotten.

I think that the member for Shortland is better than his comments that he uttered today. It's unfortunate that he made them. Given the fact that he also made them in this parliament previously, I think he needs to really curb his language and be mindful of what he is saying and the people who might be affected by that sort of narrative, which is so unnecessary.

With that, I wish everybody a very good winter. With that, I wish everybody a very good winter.