Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

My heart goes out to all the family and loved ones of those lost on 14 December, when we saw Australians, most of them from the Jewish community, being massacred by extremist violence—extremist violence, I may say, that was heinous, cruel and cowardly. I said at the time, in the days followed this awful atrocity, that words failed me. What words can you say to people who've lost loved ones to such a terrible act of violence? What I can do today is offer their families, their friends, their loved ones and, in fact, all of those impacted in the community—the locals at Bondi, the surf lifesavers, the first responders, the police and the Jewish community right around the country and indeed internationally—this: I can offer you my deepest sympathy and respect and love and compassion. I can offer you that. I know a lot of people in this chamber are feeling exactly the same way.

I was surprised at how long it took me to process this. I reflected on it at the time I had arrived back from an international flight. The morning after, I was at Melbourne airport, and I bumped into Mr Dreyfus, who was on his way to Sydney. We only had a few very brief words, and I offered him my condolences. I do want to reflect on what he said to me. He said to me, 'This is what we had feared might happen, or would happen.' So I do want to say today, very clearly, antisemitism in any form is completely unacceptable. Any kind of racial hatred is completely unacceptable and has to be condemned, and we have to find all sorts of ways to combat that. We have to throw the kitchen sink at this problem.

I struggled to process this because, like other Tasmanians, as we're very close to the 30th anniversary of the worst massacre in Australia's history at Port Arthur, I remember the deep distress and trauma and sorrow in my community when that happened. I also had personal connections to the Hoddle Street massacre. On many levels, it is really difficult to understand how two human beings—a father and a son too—could commit such a terrible crime. But we have to try and understand if we're going to stop it happening again.

I wanted to say two other things today. While I was trying to understand, like every other Australian, how this could happen, how two human beings could inflict such cruelty and horror, unspeakable horror, and fear on other human beings, I was also trying to understand why there were other people in our country and around the world who were exploiting this terrible tragedy. At a time of national distress and mourning and shock, within hours, disinformation was being spread like wildfire on social media. I'm not just talking about people talking bullshit on the internet; I'm talking about manufactured AI generated content on social media platforms. We can only guess the motivations of these people, trying to sow more fear, more hatred, more uncertainty, more anxiety and more confusion. We've got to get on top of this. This went on for weeks. Luckily, there have been some fact checkers out there working on this stuff, because it makes life hell for authorities and those who are trying to put the pieces of this puzzle together.

I was also asking myself how it was that other fellow politicians, within days of this tragedy, at a time of national distress, could be politicising this for their own political ends, blaming, simplifying this extremely difficult and complex problem that we all have to tackle, making the situation worse, in their own way spreading misinformation. Before we even had any facts about these two cold-blooded murderers, these two extremists, before we knew anything: 'It was the government's fault! It was the Prime Minister's fault! It was the Greens's fault!' Terrorism experts were saying, 'We will find out in due course what radicalised these two men'—and it was men, I'd like to point out. Funny how it's never women; it's always men. What radicalised these two men? Look at the Christchurch massacre; it took months to piece together the process that led to the radicalisation of a young Australian man, a Neo-Nazi, who took 51 lives in a mosque in Christchurch. Yet, no, the LNP didn't want to wait for answers; they were out there simplifying this debate, trying to control the narrative to suit their own political agendas. I was horrified—and, you know what, I reckon a lot of Australians were, too. It hasn't done them any good, but it's dangerous. It makes our life a lot more difficult if we are truly going to get to the bottom of how this happened and what was behind it.

If we really want to stop this happening again—and we owe that to the Jewish community, and we owe it to all Australians to protect them; that is the No. 1 role of government—then, please, take this seriously and put the bullshit politics aside and focus on what needs to be done—I withdraw that.