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

I seek leave to move a motion relating to the International Day to Combat Islamophobia, as circulated.

Leave not granted.

Pursuant to contingent notice of motion standing in the name of Senator Waters, I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent me moving a motion to provide for the consideration of a matter, namely a motion to give precedence to a motion relating to the International Day to Combat Islamophobia.

March 15 is the anniversary of the Christchurch mosque massacre, and it marks the International Day to Combat Islamophobia. The urgency of this motion should be self-evident, but I will nonetheless make a case for urgency. Seven years ago, an Australian white supremacist terrorist walked into two mosques in Christchurch and shot and murdered 51 Muslims as they gathered for Friday prayers. They were fathers, mothers, grandparents and children. The man who carried out that massacre was not a stranger to this country. He was Australian raised; he was Australian radicalised. The ideology that fuelled this act of terror did not appear overnight. It was built over decades of Islamophobia, decades of Muslims being portrayed as dangerous, decades of politicians and the media telling us that Muslims are a threat to the so-called Australian way of life, and decades of rhetoric suggesting Muslims are inherently suspicious, unworthy of protection and a disease to be inoculated against.

Instead of confronting the conditions that made such an atrocity possible, governments have looked away or, even worse, leaned right in. Australia has never truly reckoned with the fact that this terrorist was shaped by the Islamophobia that has long been fuelled and tolerated in this country. That reckoning never came. If the Christchurch massacre had truly woken this country up, things would look very different today. Instead, Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate have become more normalised, more emboldened and more dangerous.

Just recently, a white supremacist was arrested in Western Australia for planning a terrorist attack on mosques in Perth, after allegedly stockpiling weapons and ammunition, yet in the media the terrorist was described as 'a young tradie whose life had come undone'. The WA police commissioner was publicly sympathetic to the man who intended to slaughter Muslim men, women and children. Why? It's because he was white. The media downplayed this terrorism, and they showed more care to the perpetrators than they did to the potential victims.

A far-right man recently threw abuse and punches at a Muslim community dinner where kids were also present. This happened in Ballarat. He was just told to move on by the police—nothing more. It is no wonder that Islamophobia is on the rise. Mosques and Islamic schools across this country are receiving violent threats. A Muslim cemetery was desecrated; pigs heads were left on graves. Lakemba Mosque has received threat after threat. This is the reality that Muslims are living under today in this country, and yet, instead of confronting the hate that fuels this violence, our politics and media continue to inflame it, legitimise it and normalise it.

Edward Said wrote Covering Islam 45 years ago, and his arguments about how the Western world deliberately constructs and portrays Islam and Muslims as synonymous with terrorism and religious hysteria are perhaps even truer now than they were 50 years ago. The use of language and rhetoric to distort, diminish, dehumanise and demonise us has only escalated. The Prime Minister will happily turn up at Ramadan festivals and markets and use us as video props for his performative solidarity, but, when it comes to standing unequivocally against Islamophobia, taking action to protect Muslims and acting with urgency, there is absolutely no movement.

Seven years ago, 51 Muslims were massacred in Christchurch by an Australian man with an extreme Islamophobic ideology. Christchurch should have been a turning point that forced this country to confront its own anti-Muslim hate and racism, but this horror was not enough to make you act. I'm not actually sure what it will take to make you lot act, but perhaps on the anniversary, this 15 March, you can reflect on this and then commit to treating Islamophobia with the urgency that it deserves. Perhaps on this International Day to Combat Islamophobia you can find it in your heart to show the Muslims in this country that you care a little bit about us rather than shut down this motion.

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yet again we see the Greens political party focus on launching political attacks on their political enemies and not on social cohesion. This motion, which has been moved by Senator Faruqi, was first circulated minutes before we began today, demonstrating that the Greens political party had no intention of working with anyone else in this chamber to seek agreement. This government strongly resists and opposes Islamophobia, and I encourage anyone to look at the government's record to see the evidence of that.

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

You do nothing.

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We can see from Senator Faruqi's constant interjections that, as I say, she's more interested in political attacks than in actually working together. The approach the Greens have taken today by distributing this motion minutes before we began to sit, without giving anyone an opportunity to look at it and without seeking to work together, stands in contrast to the approach that the government has repeatedly taken on issues of social cohesion. We have repeatedly worked with other parties, including the Greens political party, to develop motions that the entire chamber can agree to. That is not the approach of the Greens political party, who are always more interested in political attacks than in social cohesion.

What we need to do in this country is find ways to work together to stamp out Islamophobia and to stamp out every other form of racism that unfortunately Australians experience. For those reasons, the government will be opposing this motion. If the Greens political party want, in the future, to seek to work with us rather than dump a motion on us before we begin, we'd be happy to discuss it with them. On that basis, I move:

That the question be now put.

Slade Brockman (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the question be put.

Slade Brockman (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the suspension motion be agreed to.