I want to get back to talking about the bill at hand. I have to say that I am not very happy to rise and speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024. This is something that we should not be having to do in this place, because we should not be having the kinds of commentary and the behaviour here in this state or indeed across the country or the world that appear to be going on at the moment. This is not something that can, should or will be tolerated, not just here in Victoria but here in Australia.

In thinking about making a contribution to this bill, a bit of an incident happened over Australia Day, and I am going to read out some of the commentary that was made in relation to a post that I put up of me congratulating an awesome new Australian – he was so excited; we had a thumbs up – and another one where I welcomed a group of school students at Garrang Wilam Primary School, a wonderful local primary school that Labor went ahead and funded and built and I opened a couple of years ago, a great local school. I had a photo with grade 6 students, who were very happy to talk to me about what is and what makes a really great leader. These comments are disturbing, but I am going to read them out because this is what this is about, and this needs to stop. These types of comments escalate, if left unchecked, into some of the most abhorrent behaviour that we are seeing not just in Victoria but across the country. They say:

Spot the Aussie

Which country is this please !!

Nice multiculturalism. I only see one culture there, and it isn’t Whites.

Had to check this was in Australia.

… it’s so sad. 4 Aussie kids in the midst of multicultural madness.

Trying breed out white Australia that for sure, reverse racism

A grim portent for “our” future.

Where is this school? Hardly a white child in sight? Who exactly are you supporting????

Is this the new children’s prison? –

that was in relation to a photo of children in grade 6 –

Is that school in pakistan …

These are some of the comments – just a few. Some of the others I will not read here in this chamber; it is entirely inappropriate. This is why we need to get behind and pass this bill. The bill delivers on our government’s commitment to delivering much-needed reforms to our anti-vilification protections and it strengthens our ability to tackle hate speech and keep Victorians safe.

It saddens me to say that we have seen such a disturbing increase in the frequency of hateful and divisive rhetoric over the past couple of years. It has not happened overnight; it has been creeping in. We have seen this manifest – I mean, there is no other word for it – dangerously overseas. Just a few weeks ago, as the member for Frankston pointed out, one of the richest men in the world, and a close confidant to the new President of the United States, stood on the steps of the US Capitol and performed a Nazi salute. He tried to say it was something else; we know what it was. He did not do it once, he did it twice. This same person then spoke at a rally for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, encouraging Germans to get over their Nazi history. This same person owns one of the largest social media platforms, which I do not use anymore because it has all become such a cesspit of cruel and nasty hate. It is easy to bring out your worst, darkest impulses when you can hide behind a social media profile.

Those Australia Day posts and the last one of the children that I posted were met with a swarm of trolls and haters. I would like to say that these folks had faceless fake profiles; I do not think they live in the western suburbs. Conveniently for them, the accounts are locked.

I spoke earlier this week in my members statement about the Australia Day dramas. I was doing what any MP would normally do on Australia Day: attending a citizenship ceremony in my local community. It is a day of pride, whether you call it national pride or in being an Australian, and joy for so many of our newest Australians. They were overwhelmed. People had tears in their eyes, and I am not exaggerating. It is a big deal because we are not just welcoming new citizens, we are celebrating what makes Australia a great country, and that is that we tolerate and we celebrate diversity and who we are and we accept people from all different walks of life. We embrace them.

The commentary that I received ended up being a toxic debate on immigration. I had never seen anything like it. It was so disappointing. The biggest gripe that people had was that they could not see an Australian flag in the background of a photo of me with a guy I had just welcomed as an Australian citizen. Imagine that: a full-blown social media tantrum over whether or not a politician was waving a flag. What is worse is that we have seen this same old and tired culture war each and every single year, and it is certainly something that has been endorsed and has been emboldened and rolled out by the federal Liberal Party and Peter Dutton, who each year has had major tantrums over Australia Day. Last year there was the Woolworths boycott over Australia Day merchandise, of all things; the year before that I think it was about forcing councils to hold citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day; and just a few weeks ago he made some bizarre announcement on not including the Indigenous flags at national press conferences.

At a time when people are worried about the cost of living and when they are worried about housing affordability, interest rates and climate change, the right wing in this country want to have a debate about flags. All this might seem trivial – banal even. I am an MP; I can expect a few nasty comments on my Facebook feeds and even racist comments, which we try to hide. But the real sadness here is that these people then spread their hate and their vitriol onto other posts that families are watching because their children are there with the local MP celebrating a wonderful conversation about what it is to be a leader in this country and how they can improve at school. That then spreads over onto those pages, and their parents read those comments.

In the past I have had to go back to school posts – innocent posts – of children at our very multiculturally diverse schools in Wyndham. They are Australian kids; they were born here. They are as Aussie as it gets. They are ruined by racists jumping into the comments. Like I said, I do not think the majority live in our community. It is not who we are in the western suburbs.

Reading these comments out today was to highlight that these kinds of people who say these sorts of things are looking for a platform, and they have been emboldened, whether it is by the election of a new president over in the US, whether it is by someone doing a Nazi salute twice and then pretending it was something else, or whether it is by the dog whistling of a federal opposition leader talking about Australia Day and what it is to be an Australian. As soon as these leaders are making these statements and engaging in this kind of behaviour, it brings people out of the woodwork, and it certainly has here in Victoria.

This bill is all about repealing the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001. It establishes two new serious vilification offences that will instead sit in the Crimes Act 1958. There has been a lot of conversation about that and the changes in the bill and why we are doing it, but I do hope me reading out those comments makes people reflect about the disgusting language, disgusting racism and hate speech that is happening at the moment. It does need to stop. It is why bills like this before the house are so important.

I would urge those opposite to support this bill. Let us stamp out antisemitism, let us stamp out Islamophobia, let us stamp out vilification of our LGBTIQ community. This is a good bill, and I commend it to the house.