Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like so many in this place, I continue to meet with members of the Iranian community here in Australia. In recent weeks I met with representatives of the Iranian Australian community in my hometown of Perth. Their message was a simple one and it was a very clear one: they are terrified for their families and their friends back at home in Iran, and they are just tired. They are tired of watching a regime brutalise its own people with impunity.

To be very clear, the Iranian regime is inflicting violence on its own civilians. Worse yet, this includes women, children, young people—as we've seen on the television—journalists, human rights activists, as well as religious and ethnic minorities. This is a regime that rules by fear, lethal force against protesters, arbitrary detention, torture, ill treatment and the intimidation of families. It punishes not just the individual but the entire family, because collective punishment is the point. It silences the truth with censorship and with shutting down internet communications—cutting people off from each other, hiding abuses and trying to make the world look away.

The Iranian Australian community also speak about the fear that follows them here, with threats, intimidation and harassment. They have escaped the regime but it follows them here to Australia—the long reach of a regime that refuses to stop at its own borders. This is unacceptable. We stand in solidarity with the Iranian people in their pursuit of freedom, dignity and justice. To the Iranian Australian community: your concerns have been heard.