Australians are united by what we have in common, not our differences - Adjournment Debate
23 July 2025
The results of the last federal election said something about the kind of nation we are, and we have seen it in parliament this week. On Tuesday we saw new MPs being sworn in on Bibles, on Korans and on the Bhagavad Gita. We saw gender equality in the members and the senators sitting on the government benches during the Governor-General's address, and in members' first speeches we've heard beautiful stories encompassing the glorious diversity of modern Australia.
At the last election, the Australian public chose a government that reflects and represents modern Australia, a diverse nation united by common values and aspirations, a nation that doesn't always agree but still comes together around the bigger things that unite us as Australians, a nation that defines itself not by our differences but by what we have in common. It is what the Prime Minister called a 'progressive patriotism'. The Australian voters voted for this at the last election, but they also voted to reject those politicians who practise the politics of division. They rejected politicians who sought to advance their own partisan interests by dividing the Australian community.
The world has thrown a lot of challenges at Australia over the last three years. Australians have been traumatised by direct connections to international conflicts, and some Australians have disagreed strongly about how the world and Australia should respond to these conflicts. It's challenged the cohesion of our diverse Australian community. I've said before that cohesion is a verb, not a noun. It means the action of forming a united whole. It's an ongoing process, not an end state. Preserving our cohesion as a nation requires a continuing work, and Australian multiculturalism works best when we work at it. This means engaging with each other in good faith; understanding that our fellow Australians will sometimes see things differently than we do and listening to each other with empathy and curiosity about this rather than judgement; trying to understand where other Australians are coming from and why they think, feel and act in the way they do; and using that understanding to find common ground. Unfortunately, in the last parliament, some in this place chose to exploit the challenges we faced, demonising some groups and seeking to divide the Australian community for political gain. The Australian public rejected this at the last election, and many of the most enthusiastic practitioners of this kind of politics are no longer with us in this chamber as a result.
But there are lessons for those who remain and for their parties. For the Greens, the lesson is that you can't build a political movement condemning everyone who disagrees with you. You can't build a political movement based on the premise that everyone who disagrees with you is either financially corrupt or morally evil. Unsurprisingly, this approach to politics doesn't persuade anyone who didn't already agree with you beforehand, and it makes it impossible to build a big enough coalition to actually deliver anything on the issues you care about. Speaking of coalitions, there are lessons for the Liberal-National coalition from the last election too. From labelling Chinese Australians participating in our democracy as Chinese spies to actively preferencing Pauline Hanson's One Nation party, it sometimes felt like the Liberal-National coalition were deliberately trying to alienate every segment of modern Australia.
But tonight I want to highlight one specific trend on the right of politics that has attracted less attention and needs to be addressed. It's not a reflection of the broader Australian community but a narrow part of right-wing politics. In far-right circles around the world, there's now an emerging trend to specifically single out Indian diaspora communities in anti-immigration rhetoric. Media reports have noted a significant increase in overtly racist AI generated material targeting Indian Australian communities on social media platforms like TikTok.
Former Liberal National MP George Christensen has even nonsensically alleged that the Albanese government rigged the last election in slow motion by flooding Australia with Indian migrants. George is an irrelevant nobody, but this kind of singling-out of Indian migrants over other groups has more recently been taken up by Advance, a group that has actively campaigned for Liberal-National coalition candidates. Advance recently published an anti-immigration video that explicitly singled out Indian and Chinese migrants as hurting Australia by sending remittances to their families. The video even included a photo of the Prime Minister wearing a turban—an act of respect at a Sikh event. What are they trying to achieve by sharing a picture of the Prime Minister wearing a turban in an anti-immigration video? And why did they not use a picture of any other group referenced in that report?
The new Leader of the Opposition says that she wants the Liberal Party to reflect and represent modern Australia, and I'm glad to hear it. All of us in this chamber should work together in this cause. I welcome the Liberal Party joining this mission. A good contribution the new opposition leader could make is taking on this emerging trend of singling out Indian diaspora communities in anti-immigration rhetoric on the right. She should nip it in the bud now in the interest of a modern Australia.
