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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2016-09-28 Daily Xml
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Racism

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (15:52): Racism is a malevolent force which we have not yet succeeded in defeating. To the contrary, in recent months it has reared its head more fiercely and brought to the forefront of our global society tensions over race and culture.

Particularly in the wake of Britain's historic vote to leave the European Union, reports of racism and racist attacks against Europeans, including their neighbours, the Irish, and their largest migrant community, the Polish, have been pouring in. The attacks have been so shocking that the Polish embassy issued a statement saying that it was shocked and deeply concerned by the incidents of abuse against Poles and other Eastern Europeans. The trend was so noticeable that it spurred a social media hashtag: #PostRefRacism.

Europeans are not the only victims of this disturbing trend, with the ever-present scourge of Islamophobia rearing its ugly head yet again. On Facebook, a video of members of the far right English Defence League waving flags with racist motives, such as 'Refugees Not Welcome', screaming obscenities outside a Birmingham mosque, have been posted.

This trend of racism and far right extremism is not isolated to Britain. We have a situation around the world where fringe groups fighting immigrants, touting slogans about putting their country first and shirking the evil influence of multiculturalism, is growing and gaining political traction. In the United States, Donald Trump has denied that he is racist, while simultaneously proposing horrendous policies, such as tagging the Muslim population, calling his supporters, who had beaten a homeless Latino man, 'passionate' and implying that a man who was beaten by his supporters for protesting in the Black Lives Matter campaign deserved the beating, saying, 'Maybe he should have been roughed up. It was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.' All this in the name of 'make America great again', as if multiculturalism or immigration is ruining America.

Here in Australia we are not immune. During 2015, there was a spate of anti-Islamic rallies held by the group Reclaim Australia, and even attended by a Queensland federal Coalition MP, George Christensen. Protestors at these events argued that they were not racist, despite comments reported by the ABC, such as, 'I want my kids to have the same upbringing as I had,' 'I want our kids to be able to sing the national anthem, have Christmas carols at their school and not have to put up with the hijab,' 'Why do they need to build their own mosques and their own schools when they can send their kids to our schools?'

It is incredibly telling, is it not, that no such question is asked about why Catholic parents, for instance, choose to exercise their right to educate their children in Catholic designated schools. The notion that acceptance of Islam and Islamic peoples in our society is somehow diminishing our society is insidious and no better than the racism that was held against Vietnamese refugees in the wake of the Vietnam War and German refugees in the wake of World War II, and all the racism that has been an ever-present spectre in that post 1788 history of the Australian Aboriginal people.

In the recent federal election we had multiple fringe parties campaigning on racist platforms, such as Pauline Hanson's One Nation, which has won four Senate seats, and the Australian Liberty Alliance, which was launched by the far right anti-immigration Dutch MP, Geert Wilders, who plastered the streets of Australia with political campaign material touting political correctness as wrong: 'We will stop Islamic immigration,' 'We will stop the Islamisation of Australia.' Ms Hanson has repeatedly claimed that she is not racist, only a defender of Australian values. This is despite an over 20-year career attacking first Asians, then Muslims, and also taking aim at Aboriginal Australians.

Ms Hanson made headlines recently when speaking to a young man helping to film the SBS documentary Pauline Hanson: Please Explain! for saying, 'You're not going to tell me you're a refugee, James, are you?' When the man said no, that he was Aboriginal, Ms Hanson expressed surprise that he was Aboriginal and said that it was nice to see that he was actually working. Ms Hanson has professed that we are being swamped by cultures not our own and that Islam is not a religion at all. The One Nation website professes its religious aspect is flawed and that it is rather a totalitarian political system. Her party even calls for the prevention of Muslim politicians being sworn into parliament on the Koran. I will leave it there.

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