Australian-Israel Chamber of Commerce Speech

*Watch my address here*

I was here last August as Treasurer and on that day I spoke about Australia’s ‘fair go economy’. And I was intending today, before the events of last week, to build on that theme.

But the acts of terrorism last Friday have caused me to pause, as I think they have all Australians and people around the world, to reflect, and to now take this opportunity today to have a very different conversation.

The Jewish people, whether here in Australia or anywhere else around the world, know what it’s like to be the victim of hate speech, to be politically objectified.

They know all too well the evil of race-based ideology – the banality and viciousness of terrorism and that the real enemy, at the end of the day, is always hatred and intolerance.

It is every citizen’s responsibility in a free and independent nation to break the cycles of hate whenever and wherever they may see it.

And I know the people in this room, and across Australia, have been rightly horrified and devastated and ashamed indeed about what has happened in Christchurch, the attack on innocence in a place of worship - a terrorist atrocity committed by an Australian. It’s hard to say those words.

New Zealand is family, or “whanau” as Maori say.

Like family, we occasionally squabble, we often tease each other, but always when threatened or attacked, in the true ANZAC tradition, we’ve always got each other’s back.

And like family, Kiwis are the people most like us of any other nation in the world.

Even our flags speak of nations similar but different, with intertwined histories, and futures that will always be shared.

And we don’t say it enough: We’re very proud of New Zealand and who they are. And we love them.

Many years ago, our Queen, who we share with our Kiwi cousins, said this about the Kiwi character.

She said New Zealand is characterised by “a sense of fairness and justice; a willingness to be outward-looking; and a natural compassion for others”.

So true.

A country of good people with a good heart.

And here, at home, we have been expressing our solidarity with our Kiwi cousins.

The Silver Fern shone on our Opera House. It was a beautiful sight.

The New Zealand flag has flown above our Government House.

And across our country, our own Southern Cross has been dipped in respect, above our Parliament, on top of our Harbour Bridge and other major Commonwealth buildings.

The Australian Muslim community has reached out and offered counsellors and is providing support to the New Zealand Muslim community – along with, I’m sure support from Muslim countries all around the world and I was with them with David with the National Imams Council on Saturday in Sydney, working through those practical issues. 

In Christian churches and in Jewish synagogues over the weekend, there have been prayers for our Muslim brothers and sisters, because these three faiths are bound in their Abrahamic origins.

And thousands of Australians, of other faiths and of no faith at all, have reached across ‘the ditch’ with love, support and prayers.

Naturally, at a government level, we are providing New Zealand with every assistance they require and standing up every necessary capability here in response in Australia to keep Australians safe.

New Zealand has a world-class police, medical and forensic staff and the requirement for assistance is not a reflection of any incapacity but more the scale of the atrocity which is beyond anyone’s imagination.

And rightly, as we reflect on all of this, it is a time for grief and it is a time for reflection.

In time, we will have a better idea of how all this happened. It seems so unimaginable now.

How did this terrorist stay in the shadows, hiding amongst us in plain sight? 

Where and how did this vile radicalisation take place? I can advise you that during the last three years, the terrorist spent just 45 days in Australia, travelling extensively overseas. Picking up a smorgasbord of hate and intolerance wherever he went. 

We’ll know what laws need to change, what additional actions and precautions need to be taken.

Answers to those questions will come with time, and they must. 

Such questions are practical, they are necessary and they can be posed and considered without the need for defensiveness or some type of blame. 

About a month ago, I spoke at the National Press Club about keeping Australians safe. I spoke about what we are doing as a Government to keep Australians secure: more resources for police and intelligence services; more powers; the 12 tranches of anti-terrorism legislation; our strong border protection policies and our efforts tackling illegal narcotics like ICE and how it destroys communities; and funding extensive anti-domestic violence programs.

And as part of our efforts to keep Australians safe, we have a Safer Communities fund that has provided, since 2016, some $70 million in local community safety grants for schools and pre-schools and community organisations and local councils.

And for some months now, we have been working to expand this program and I’ve been in quite a bit of discussion with members of the Jewish community, not just here in Melbourne but in Sydney and other places.

And today, I’m announcing an acceleration and an extension of that program. Starting next year, some $55 million in community safety grants, which goes well above and beyond what our previous planned expenditure was, and for priority to be given to religious schools, for places of religious worship and for places of religious assembly.

These grants will range from $50,000 to $1.5 million and will provide for safety enhancements such as CCTV cameras, lighting, fencing, bollards, alarms, security systems and public address systems. I so wish we didn’t need this on places of worship in Australia, whether they be at temples or schools or mosques or churches. It grieves me that this is necessary but sadly, it is. And as a Government, we’ll be providing additional resources and if further resources are required, I promise you, I guarantee you, it will be delivered.

Because when I say I believe in religious freedom, which I know many Australians know I do, I believe passionately in it, I know it has to start with the right to worship and meet safely without fear of violence. This must be the first freedom we secure, so people can practice their faith in safety, and other freedoms must be secured and should follow as well.

Religious freedom is not just an inalienable right as free citizens. It is important to the very cohesion of our multicultural and successful immigrant society. Because it is for many Australians impossible to separate their faith from their culture. You can’t tell where one starts and the other finishes. It’s the same thing.

So this announcement, along with everything else we have announced over recent years, this is ‘the how’ of how we’re going about keeping Australians safe – and we’ll keep investing and we’ll keep working on ‘the how’, because the greatest responsibility I have as a Prime Minister and our Government has, and any government has, is to keep Australians safe.

But today, I wanted to engage in an even broader reflection with you, if you’d permit, about how we see difference in our world, and how we then seek to manage it because this is also critical to keeping Australians safe.

I said here in Melbourne just last Tuesday at the Menzies Lecture that you can’t have a strong economy unless you are secure – and you can’t be truly secure if your social fabric is not strong.

The bonds between us all matter.

The rainforests in North Queensland, I’m told, are older than the Amazon.

Every part of this ecosystem reinforces itself.

It doesn’t grow apart, it grows together.

And so it is with countries and our peoples.

But these ties that bind us, I believe, are now under new pressures and they are at great risk of breaking and we must acknowledge it and I acknowledge it. 

This is not just happening in Australia – it’s happening in many countries around the world today.

If we allow a culture of ‘us and them’, of tribalism, to take hold; if we surrender an individual to be defined not by their own unique worth and their own contribution but the tribe they are assigned to by others or sought to be, if we yield to the compulsion to pick sides rather than happy coexistence in this country, we will lose what makes diversity work in Australia and makes us the most successful immigrant society in the world today.

As debate becomes more fierce, I am observing that the retreat to tribalism is increasingly taking over, and for some, extremism takes hold.

Reading only news that we agree with, interacting only with people we agree with, and having less understanding and grace towards others that we do not even know, and making the worst possible assumptions about them and their motives, simply because we may disagree with them. 

This is true of the left and the right. All of them. And even more so, on both sides, from those shouting from the fringes to the mainstream of quiet Australians that just want to get on with their lives. Without all this nonsense.

Hate, blame and contempt are the staples of tribalism, it is consuming modern debate, egged on by an appetite for conflict as entertainment, not so different from the primitive appetites of the Colosseum days, with a similar corrosive impact on the fabric of our society.

Contempt, is defined by the philosophers as “the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another”.

Just think about that. The worthlessness of another.

That is where mindless tribalism takes us. 

It ends in the worst of all places. And last week it ended the lives of 50 fellow human beings, including children, who simply went to pray in a mosque in Christchurch.

I agree with the American author, Arthur Brooks, when it comes to how to address this, who recently said, “What we need is not to disagree less, but to disagree better.”

Not disagreeing less, but disagreeing better.

When we disagree better: we engage with respect, rather than questioning each other’s integrity, motive or morality.

Tribalists constantly seek to appropriate legitimate policy issues and public concerns as a tool to divide and to promote their separatist and exclusive agendas. We’ve got to stand against this. To contort and misrepresent disagreement in the worst possible of terms to drive division.

And I’ve got to say, in my experience, immigration is a classic example of this.

A discussion about the level of annual migrant intake is not a debate about the value or otherwise of multiculturalism or the economic contribution of migration. It must not be appropriated as a proxy debate for racial, religious or ethnic sectarianism.

Just because Australians are frustrated about traffic jams and population pressures encroaching on their quality of life, especially in this city of Melbourne, does not mean they are anti-migrant or racist. To the contrary, Australians respect the positive contribution that migration has made to our country.

For the overwhelming majority of Australians, myself included and I’m sure all those who are here, concerned about this issue, this is not and never would such a motivation to consider these policy issues.

But that is how tribalists seek to confect it, from both sides.

The worst example being the despicable appropriation of concerns about immigration as a justification for a terrorist atrocity. Such views have been rightly denounced and I have denounced them absolutely. But equally, so too must the imputation that the motivation supporting moderated immigration levels as being driven by racial hatred.

We cannot allow such legitimate policy debates to be hijacked like this. It’s not healthy. It’s not helpful.

Managing our population growth is just a practical policy challenge that needs answers. Not shouting. Answers I will continue to outline as we approach the next election, from our congestion busting road and rail investments that we’ve announced here in Melbourne in particular, or across Queensland, to ensuring we frame our migration program to meet the needs of our economy, the capacity of our cities and the opportunities needed and present in our regions as well. It’s just a practical policy issue.

I’ve also seen a similar trend in relation to the debate on border protection policies and Sol was kind enough to talk about my experience there.

For me this has always been about ensuring the integrity of our borders because I believe this is essential to a successful immigration program and I support a successful immigration program and I know that’s a view shared by many migrant communities in Australia, and it’s about preventing the horrific impact of the people smugglers trade. 

In all of this debate, as heated as it’s got over the last decade where I’ve been involved in it, I have always never sought to question the compassionate motives of those who would hold a different view to me on this topic. In fact, I’ve acknowledged it on many occasions. We can disagree about the policy measures but I’ve rarely had that courtesy extended back to me. It’s important that when we don’t hold the same views on these things that we don’t fall into the habit of asserting motivations to others whom we don’t even know, who we’ve never even met.

As Australians, we need to stand against, I think, this militant and lazy groupthink that distorts our public debate. We need to stand up for our individualism and seek to think better of each other.

Part of disagreeing better, is to appreciate our differences - or to understand, in the words of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, “the dignity of difference”.

Extremism, or in a different form fundamentalism, is simply an inability to tolerate difference.

It is to feel threatened by others who do not conform to our own worldview.

And it takes many forms: religious extremism, secular extremism, political extremism including of the kind we have just seen in Christchurch.

Every terrorist attack has at its core a hatred of difference and a hatred about the choices and lives of others.

Prime Minister Ardern, I think, grasped the essence of this on Friday when she said of the New Zealand Muslim community, “they are us”.

And I reflected this in my own comments on that day when I said an attack on one faith is an attack on all. And an attack on innocence and peace is an attack on us all who love peace and innocence.

This is a powerful idea. Not them but us.

Tribalists always want to separate us, divide us, set one Australian against another.

As Prime Minister, I want to continue to bring Australians together, not set them against one another. 

I want us to reject the thinking that one person’s gain is another person’s loss. This is a doctrine of scarcity that betrays our social and economic prosperity and success in Australia and it indeed creates an environment for conflict and division.

I want to remove the demarcation lines between Australians.

I see every Australian as an individual, not part of some tribal group to be traded off against another.

And I believe, not in a tribalism that divides, but in an us that unites.

So let me affirm today what us means to me:

Indigenous Australians are us.

Immigrant Australians from all nationalities and backgrounds, including Chinese, Lebanese, Greek, Indian, Turkish, Vietnamese, if I listed them all we’d never get out of here this afternoon, all us. 

Muslim Australians are us.

Christian Australians are us.

Jewish Australians are us.

Hindu Australians are us.

Atheist or agnostic Australians are us.

LGBTIQ Australians are us.

Whoever you vote for - us.

Older Australians, younger Australians, female Australians, male Australians, regional Australians, it’s all us and that’s how we can identify.

 From the bottom of Tasmania to the tip of Cape York, from Byron to Broome, all 25 million of us. Us. 

We belong to each other. We stand with each other. We must love and respect each other more. That’s what we must affirm today to fight the forces that will otherwise weaken our nation.

Now, my friends, in conclusion, in a few weeks’ time, I will visit the Governor-General, not for a cup of tea, we may have one, and I’ll ask for an election to be called.

And that election will be hard fought.

And in this election, I see my challenge as not to convince any one Australian to join my side, but to convince them that as a result of what we are putting forward, as a political movement, as a Government, that we are on theirs, as individuals, whoever they may be and whatever life’s circumstances they may face.

My case is for an even stronger Australia - prosperous, safe and united. 

A strong economy that can deliver the guaranteed funding for the services that all Australians rely on, without increasing their taxes which I know would harm our economy.

We face increased uncertainty in the global economy in the year ahead. This has been true for many years now, and our Government has continued to protect and steward our economy, with record jobs growth, lower taxes, support for small and family businesses including those retailers, Sol, building the infrastructure Australia needs to bust congestion and manage population growth, returning the Budget to surplus on 2 April this year and maintaining our AAA credit rating.

Now, this strong economic management has enabled us to make more than 2,000 life-changing medicines affordable by listing them on the PBS, delivering record levels of hospitals and schools funding and to achieve the highest level of bulk-billing for Medicare in Australia’s history. 

Now is not the time for economic experiments if it ever is, or handing the economic wheel over to those who have been unable to demonstrate an ability to drive. This will make Australia weaker in the decade ahead, and all Australians will pay for it. 

As we saw following John Howard, left the scene, vote Labor once and you’ll pay for it for a decade.

Continued responsible management of our economy will enable us to continue with our plans to keep Australians safe, with record investments to combat domestic violence, counterterrorism in all its forms, rebuild our defence forces and respond speedily to the natural disasters of flood, drought and fire which so often ravage our country, our people and our economy.

And our fundamental belief that one Australian does not have to fail for another to succeed, to reject the politics of conflict and division, that’s how we can best continue to bring Australians together, to reinforce the social fabric so important to our economic success and security as a nation. 

 We will continue to engage in strengthening this social fabric – in finding a bigger place for ‘us’ and a smaller place for the idea of ‘them’.

I will finish with a simple Maori exhortation to us all in this difficult time, “Kia Kaha” - stay strong. That is my plan for Australia.