Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I am sorry, I did not hear that interjection, but the senator opposite ducked his opportunity to contribute to this debate. It is a healthy thing for us to debate issues like this. The government has the power of proscription. The Attorney-General has got that power but it needs to be checked by a proper debate in the parliament. We maintain that that power should come from the parliament and not the executive, but that is not the way things are in this country.

It would have been a very different matter had this been a proscription of the military wing of the PKK, but it is not. It is a proscription of the whole of the PKK, which means the representation of the Kurdish people in Turkey. It is a political organisation. It has a very vigorous social justice component to it. The Kurds are fighting against, amongst other things, not just the repression of their aspirations for self-determination but the repression of their language. Can you imagine what it is like to be in a community where your culture is effectively repressed? One needs to look at the history of Ireland to see what that does to a community and how a community reacts to that. But the Turkish authorities have proscribed the Kurds from teaching their children their own language. Ought not Australia to be saying to the government of Turkey that that cannot be justified, no matter what the rights and wrongs of this dispute are? It is not permissible in a modern functioning democracy which values plurality and the rights of its citizens.

No wonder people react to that. We do not support violence, but you have to understand where violence comes from. Very often it comes from repression, loss of language, loss of culture and denial of rights, so there is a lot to be put right in Turkey. This is a sledgehammer proscription, which would have been much better handled if the concentration had been on the military operations of the PKK and not on all components of the PKK, as is occurring here. Let us hope that Norway has the success that Australia is not setting out to achieve. That will be much more important than any debate we can have in this chamber.

I listened to this proscription carefully and I valued Senator Ray’s contribution and the contribution of other members of the opposition. There is a very healthy divergence of opinions within the opposition ranks, which itself must be honoured, particularly when it is brought into a debate like this. This is an extraordinarily difficult issue and it is important that it gets debated here. The government has the numbers, of course, to override any change that debate may make to the impact of this proscription, and we will see that in action shortly. Nevertheless, I am proud to have brought this disallowance motion to the chamber and I thank everybody who took part in the debate. It has led to a better understanding of the difficulty of the issue and the fact that it might not be the right decision that is being made here today. The government is charged with a very heavy responsibility in reviewing that decision in the next 24 months to see that it does not simply keep the proscription going but rigorously reviews what is happening in Turkey, to see that the best outcome can occur there, and assesses feelings within the Australian community. We are talking here about many more than 100,000 people who have a Kurdish background in our community. We are talking about a whole range of issues that have caused the legal community and community organisations to express their concern about this proscription. So I hope the government will review this proscription genuinely, and I thank all those who took part in this debate.

Question put:

That the motion (That the motion (Senator Bob Brown’s) be agreed to.) be agreed to.