2021-11-24
Just yesterday I stood in this chamber in question time and asked the Leader of the Government in the Senate whether he or the Prime Minister would condemn far-Right extremism. What I got was the usual waffle, the usual sitting on the fence: 'Yes. Sure. We condemn all kinds of extremism.' That is absolute rubbish. That is bullshit. You are putting people's lives in danger. That's what you are doing. And do you know what? This is nothing new. On the weekend, we saw the far-Right extremists on the streets again. They have embedded themselves in antilockdown and antivaccination organising.
Far-Right extremism in this country is not new. There are people of colour, especially women of colour, who have faced this abuse, these threats and this violence for a very long time—people like Senator Thorpe, Senator Cox and me, and there are others as well—yet there is such a reluctance from this government to even utter the words 'far-Right extremism'. Well, it exists, and you saw it blatantly on the streets on the weekend. But it has been blatant in social media, through people's emails, for a very long time.
You can't even utter the word 'antiracism'. That's how terrible you are in stoking division and fear within communities. All you want out of this is to harvest votes to stay in power and keep doing the crap that you have been doing for years now. That is the truth. Right-wing politicians in this place have fuelled far-Right extremism. They have fuelled racism and have created an environment that is ripe for even further growth of the far Right by mainstreaming their dangerous ideologies and enabling far-Right groups to recruit more members.
We know now that up to 50 per cent of ASIO's domestic counterterrorism case load relates to what you like to call 'ideologically motivated violent extremism'. You can't bring yourself to say 'far-Right extremism'. There was a big report, 'Nazis Next Door', published by the Nine newspapers just a few months ago, which alerted us to the really terrible truths about the growing threat of far-Right extremism and white supremacy. The report was shocking, but it was not entirely surprising to those of us who have followed the rise of the far Right closely and are impacted by its deadly consequences. We have seen those deadly consequences in Christchurch, where 51 innocent Muslims were brutally murdered by an Australian man, because you refuse to stand up and condemn far-Right extremism. Develop a backbone. Do the right thing and condemn far-Right extremism today.