Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The coalition try to talk the talk, but when it actually comes to the crux of it, they want to remove anything of consequence in this motion and talk in abstract terms about everyone being respectful to everyone else. Sure, we should all be respectful, but this is a particular instance where the motion says that this one senator has vilified and mocked people based on their Muslim religion. It talks about disrespecting Muslim Australians. It talks about disrespecting parliament. So you want to remove all of that, and you just want to talk about respecting each other. Well, this is where respecting each other and just talking the talk has got us. This parliament drips now in racism because for decades politicians—and both major parties, can I say—let it happen. Today, there's a senator here who effectively said that he hates Muslims. That is what it has come down to because you all let it happen, and I won't let that go. I won't let that go, because for years Muslims have been warning you all that, if we don't deal with this now, this is where it'll end up. Christchurch happened when an Australian man mercilessly murdered 51 Muslims. This country did nothing. The dog whistling on migrants goes on. The dog whistling on refugees goes on. It's done by both major parties. It's done by the media. That is what has legitimised what we see in this chamber almost every other day.

Yes, this motion is good. It's finally holding someone to account. It's finally holding Senator Pauline Hanson to account for the pathetic old tactic that she used in the chamber yesterday. Yes, that's a step forward, but there is so much more to be done. On the minister's shelf there is a road map that has been gathering dust for the last 12 months—the National Anti-Racism Framework. Take that off the shelf, dust it off, put funding into it, and start implementing it right now. If you say that there are some red lines and that one red line is racism and discrimination, then do something about it. Nazis are literally marching on our streets, and that is being allowed to happen in New South Wales by the New South Wales Labor government. A motion is good, but that is nowhere near what we need to do.

Every single person in this chamber should be forced to do antiracism training. That has been a recommendation for a long time of various committees and frameworks. Let's start there. At the end of the day, unless discrimination, racism and inequity for First Nations people are ended, nothing will change, because this country was built on violence, on racism and on discrimination against First Nations people.

Today, as a Muslim woman who has faced this racism and discrimination from the day she stepped into public life, I plead with you to act on it, because it gives me no pleasure to say I warned you, when I stepped into this parliament, about where the normalisation and legitimisation of racism would lead to. Let this motion today be a wake-up call. Let this be the start of actually dealing with structural and systemic racism that pervades this country. Let that be grounded in justice for First Nations people.