Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I also am concerned about the response from the commissioner. I would have hoped that the commissioner might have placed some great weight on the fact that the resolution to which he was responding was in fact a practically unanimous resolution of the Senate. I also want to reinforce Senator Abetz and Boswell's view that boycotts of Jewish businesses are repugnant to any democratically minded Australian. I acknowledge that a feature of the Australian democracy, in our easygoing way, is that people are free, within certain very confined grounds, to say anything and to participate in demonstrations and strikes. That is the way we are in Australia. We would never want that taken away so that we were not free to express our views and our opinions. But there is a concern that this involves Jewish businesses. It brings back the perceptions, understandings and a view of history—as Senator Abetz mentioned. These are not subjective comments; this is the history. In Germany in the 1930s through to the 1940s, and to a lesser extent in some other European countries, action was taken against busin­esses solely on the basis that the owners of those businesses happened to be Jewish. I cannot quote but I know enough about German history during the 1930s to know that both Hitler and Goebbels would have had reasons which they would explain to the public of Germany as to why the activity in Germany at the time was not being dealt with in a way in which Australians and most freedom-loving people around the world would have responded. I know enough of Goebbels's history to say that he would have given an explanation and if you wanted to believe it you could easily have done so. The incident to which Senator Boswell referred and which he has been passionate about for some time involves the boycott of a business on the sole basis, as I understand it, that it is Jewish. At a cursory glance, maybe it does make a point about some incident that is happening overseas. But here it is the sort of explanation that Goebbels would have given. He would have given it glibly and cleverly, as most propagandists do. In Australia at this stage of our history, or at any stage, we do not want to allow our country to be involved in any sorts of boycotts that impact on people's businesses, their livelihoods and their ability to act freely because they happen to be Jewish people. I am not as familiar with all of the ins and outs of the Greens political party as Senator Boswell clearly is. I know he has followed this very closely because he is passionate about it. I cannot quite work out what the Greens' view on this issue is. In fact, I have to confess that—