Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to add my support to this condolence motion. Before I start, I'd just like to thank Senator Faruqi for what was an incredibly heartfelt and tough speech to give in this place. If anybody in this room were to understand and know how shocking and horrifying the events on 15 March were, it would be Senator Faruqi. Senator Faruqi, of course, has had to live through this not just as a mother, not just as a member of the Muslim community, but as a leader in the Australian Muslim community. Thank you, Mehreen.

The horrors that we saw unfold in Christchurch sent a shockwave through New Zealand, Australia and the rest of the world. However, the most horrifying aspect was that some people weren't shocked at all. The conversations that I had with a number of members of the Muslim community in my home town of Adelaide in the days following the terrorist attack and the massacre were the most shocking of all. People were not surprised that something like this had eventually occurred. For so long, people have been asking us, as leaders and politicians, and members of the Australian media to take seriously the damage and the concern about the words used and the politics played over Muslim migration to this country. When you hear a 15-year-old or 16-year-old young woman or young man express that they're frightened because this could have happened in Adelaide, it should send the biggest shockwaves of all to us as leaders in this place.

This must be a moment of reckoning. As political leaders, whatever side of the fence we sit on, we must take more responsibility for how this issue is discussed and debated and what we can do to lead by example. We need to show compassion and unity and call out racism when we see it. The horror of what occurred in Christchurch, the horror of what occurred in those mosques that day—an attack on a group of people at their most vulnerable, at their most peaceful, at a time of intimacy between them and their god—is the most cowardly act of all.

The strength of leadership shown by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in the face of the attacks has been extraordinary, and it's been wonderful to hear people on all sides pay respect and regard to that leadership today. For all of us it's an opportunity to take more of a leaf out of Prime Minister Ardern's book. It strikes me, as I sit here listening to the speeches, that words are easy and action is much harder. We must use this as a moment of reckoning, because something has to change. When I hear a 14-year-old or 15-year-old girl say that she's scared to catch the bus—she couldn't go into the city in the week following the attack because she didn't know what people would say to her on the bus while she was wearing a headscarf—I know that that's not the Australia I want to live in, not the Australia I want my daughter to grow up in and not the Australia that any young girl should have to grow up in.

As political leaders we must use this as a moment of change. We must call out racism when we see it. We must lead by example. We must be prepared to stand up and stand tall and show that compassion, empathy, unity and celebration of diversity are what make us a strong nation, standing side by side with our New Zealand brothers and sisters, our cousins, and hand in hand, Muslim and non-Muslim Australians and global citizens. That's the leadership that we need to show. I don't want any young kid growing up in this country feeling that they are less simply because of their religion, the religion of their parents or the country which they may have come from. Every child in this country deserves to grow up knowing that they are loved for who they are, not what they're not.

Some people in this place have sought to use what happened in New Zealand for their own political gain—nastiness, vulgar statements. While today is not the day to take action on that, the day will come, and those people must be confronted, called out and isolated, because they are not Australian. They don't represent the values of our nation or the Australia that any of us want our children to grow up in.