Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In February last year the director-general of ASIO did not mince his words. He said that in Australia the extreme right-wing threat is real and it is growing. He said:

In suburbs around Australia, small cells regularly meet to salute Nazi flags, inspect weapons, train in combat and share their hateful ideology.

He said that 'these groups are more organised and security conscious than in previous years'. What will it take for the government to take the threat as seriously as the director-general of ASIO does?

Many Australians have responded to the stress and anxiety of the global pandemic by trying to find an explanation other than science. Rich veins of misinformation have powered transnational conspiracy theories such as QAnon, the antivaccination movement, 5G protesters and the antilockdown movement. These movements are a vector of radicalisation. They share a direct, deliberate connection with the world view of the far Right—racism, anti-Semitism and white supremacy. Umberto Echo said, 'At the root of fascist psychology lies an obsession with conspiracies'. This has always been the history of fascism. It is a political movement that takes vulnerable people and makes them capable of violence.

In recent days attention has been paid to Mr Kelly and his role in promoting exactly these kinds of conspiracies. In addition, the member for Dawson has a number of deliberate and non-accidental links to far-Right extremism. Famously he spoke at a Reclaim Australia rally in Mackay in 2015. In 2017 Mr Christensen appeared on a podcast called The Convict Report produced by a white nationalist group called The Dingoes. Mr Christensen wasn't concerned about the podcast's history of extraordinarily anti-Semitic and racist propaganda. At the time he told BuzzFeed: 'I know these Dingo guys are a bit wild, so I have to say I don't agree with all their views.' Yet he endorsed their anti-Semitism by saying:

That GetUp!, we all know it's George Soros-funded. It's in the whole big worldwide movement of leftist organisations.

Anti-Semitism deserves special condemnation. Invoking Soros, like the Rocthchilds, is an old tactic of fascists and anti-Semites—a code for blaming Jews for the problems of ordinary people. We've seen the historical consequences of these beliefs. They must be condemned. They must be stamped out.

In December of that year one of the hosts of that podcast, Clifford Jennings, joined the New South Wales National Party. He would go on to lead the efforts by white supremacist groups to infiltrate the National Party, recruiting from an explicitly fascist Facebook group called The New Guard. Mr Jennings attempted to seek senior positions in the New South Wales branch of the Young Nationals.

Within a year of Christensen appearing on a far-Right podcast, the same far-Right figures were active members of his political party. Mr Christensen has maintained connections to extreme right-wing media. In September of this year, he appeared on a 90-minute stream with far-Right YouTuber Dia Beltran, a prominent QAnon conspiracy theorist who also interviews Blair Cottrell and Neil Erikson and—how could we forget?—Fraser 'It's alright to be white' Anning. He said on that show, 'I know someone who was very unfairly maligned in the Young Nationals when all of that happened, and that person was in no way, shape or form a Nazi.' Then he went on to say, 'There was a claim that these people were Neo-Nazis, and I can tell you it was a lot of rubbish.' He also told Beltran: 'You'd make a great member of parliament. You might just have to scrub some of the YouTube interviews that you've done.' In December, Christensen appeared on another alt-Right podcast, the WilmsFront podcast, on The Unshackled network. The guy who hosts that also hosts other absolutely anti-Semitic, racist shows.

So, now that Mr Christensen is campaigning for free speech to be protected on social media platforms, it's worth asking whose speech he actually wants to protect. Is it Avi Yemini, who once described himself as 'the world's proudest Jewish Nazi', is it the New Guard Facebook group, or is it the number of alt-Right meme pages that Mr Christensen himself follows on his personal Facebook page? Last year, Gizmodo published a full list of Facebook pages followed by Mr Christensen. These include pages entitled Reject Degeneracy, Embrace Tradition and Many Enemies, Much Honour—which is a Mussolini quote. He also follows Art Of The True Right, The Occidental Sentinel and The New Nationalist. These pages publish anti-Semitic and fascist propaganda, and it appears that they are supported by Mr Christensen. They deserve, and he deserves, the condemnation of this parliament.

The National Party has a particular responsibility in this area. Radicalisation can occur anywhere, but the man who committed the Christchurch massacre grew up in Grafton in northern New South Wales and he was radicalised in Grafton, reading the same fascist social media pages as Mr Christensen. New Zealand's royal commission into the Christchurch massacre noted that he would likely have performed this attack in Australia if not for our stringent gun laws. In March last year, a 23-year-old man was arrested in Nowra and charged with preparing or planning terrorist attacks. He was attempting to build an IED. In December, an 18-year-old man was arrested in Albury on terrorism related charges. He had expressed Neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic beliefs on social media and wanted to be involved in a mass-casualty event. In January this year, about 30 Neo-Nazis celebrated Australia Day in Victoria's Grampian mountains. They terrorised decent Australians in a country town, sang white power chants, posted stickers around town and even burned a cross. The people who claim to represent regional Australia have a responsibility to act and be clear, not to play footsies with fascists or minimise the danger. The far Right is a threat to Australian democracy, just as it is to American democracy.

I know that there are members and senators on the other side who take these threats and these issues just as seriously. They deserve leadership that takes them seriously as well. The Liberal Party must act on Mr Kelly. The National Party must act on Mr Christensen. The Prime Minister must act on both. Mr Christensen was always a disgrace. His association with far Right figures is a threat to public safety, promotes radicalisation, damages our social fabric and damages our global reputation. The Prime Minister must unequivocally condemn Mr Kelly for his advocacy of far Right conspiracy theories which make Australia less safe and undermine the campaign to protect us from COVID-19. He must condemn Mr Christensen for his support for fascist, racist and anti-Semitic ideas. He must remove Mr Christensen from his leadership role as chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Trade and Investment Growth. He is a disgrace—a figure of fun for some—but his decline from disgrace to dangerous means he should be condemned by the parliament. He should be disavowed by the Prime Minister and disendorsed by the Queensland LNP.

I have listened carefully to the responses of people on the other side, in the government. We should not make the mistake of false equivalences. We should not make the mistake of equivocating the Right of Australian politics with the far Right. That is an incorrect thing to do and I will never do it. But what that requires on their side is leadership. It requires acting on extremists. It requires dealing with them. It requires providing leadership to young people and vulnerable people, that the claptrap and the dangerous conspiracy theories that are propagated by these people, including Mr Christensen and Mr Kelly, should be condemned loudly and everywhere by everybody in the government, including the Prime Minister, in order to stop radicalisation and to stop the rise of the far Right.