Source: Australia Government Statements 2
Justin Smith, Host: Yesterday, the Prime Minister announced new plans to combat antisemitism, new laws around hate speech, task forces, changes to immigration. Let’s try and get some detail on it. Matt Thistlethwaite is the Member for Kingsford Smith in Sydney. He is also the Assistant Minister for Immigration. Mr. Thistlethwaite, thank you very much for your time.
Matt Thistlethwaite, Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade: Good morning, Justin. Thanks for having me on.
Smith: It’s, I know that you are, as a Sydney MP, it’s been an incredibly tough week. What are people saying to you?
Assistant Minister: Yeah, it’s been a difficult week for our community, but our community is strong. We’re coming together to unite and to show our love and support for the Jewish community. I’ve had three members of the electorate that I represent that were unfortunately murdered on the weekend and they include young Matilda, who we farewelled yesterday at a very, very moving funeral. She was a student at one of the public schools in my electorate and that public school is hurting at the moment. I’ve been out there with the teachers and students and just trying to comfort as many people as possible.
Smith: Thank you. Onto these reforms and these changes. As part of these reforms, there are new powers to cancel or reject visas for people who, quote, unquote, spread hate and division. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said, Australians share my view on people who come here with hate. We don’t need them. How is that going to work? How does that work on the ground?
Assistant Minister: Well, we’re going to lower the threshold for the Ministerial power to be able to cancel a visa for someone who preaches hate or division. Section 501 of the Migration Act allows the Minister at the moment to cancel a visa. They relate to circumstances where someone’s been involved in criminal conduct or vilifying a segment of the community. We’ll make it so that the Minister has additional powers to cancel visas for people who are preaching or spreading hate and division, not only in our community, but if they’ve got a history of doing it from another country as well, it will mean we’ll be able to deny them a visa to come to Australia.
Smith: What’s going to constitute hate and division?
Assistant Minister: Well, that’s what we’ve got to work through. And that’s why will do some consultations with not only the Jewish community, but the wider Australian community to craft an appropriate threshold. We know that at the moment —
Smith: Matt, forgive me for jumping in there, but people are going to say that as a little bit of a half measure, we made this announcement yesterday to combat antisemitism, yet we haven’t worked out what the thresholds will be yet. We don’t know what they are.
Assistant Minister: We’re going to work through that with parliamentary drafters. But what we need to do. look, it will work in this way. People who preach hate and division, that promotes violence and that promotes discord within the community. That will be a measure which a Minister could use to cancel a visa. So, that is the way that it will work. If someone’s involved in saying things that promote violence and promote discord in the wider community, that will become a ground for the Minister to cancel someone’s visa.
Smith: So, for example, if somebody is supporting a Palestinian state, for example, would that be classed as hate and division?
Assistant Minister: Look, I’m not going to get into details —
Smith: If Mr. Thistlethwaite, forgive me, but people will be looking for detail today, won’t they? The announcement was made yesterday. People will be looking, searching for detail. In fact, I know they’re searching for detail today.
Assistant Minister: Yeah. That statement of support for a Palestinian state alone, no, would not reach that threshold. But if someone was preaching that a particular comment could be used to incite someone to violence or to threaten a particular community, then that will reach the threshold and the Minister would then have the power to cancel a visa.
Smith: Okay. All right. The UK overnight has arrested people for saying ‘globalise intifada’. Is that the sort of comment that will be included in this hate speech?
Assistant Minister: Well, again, if it’s used in the context of inciting people to vilify particular communities to be involved in violence, then it would. Statements such as that, ‘river to the sea’, they are antisemitic, there’s no doubt about that. They are antisemitic statements and they disrespect the Jewish community. So, we don’t want people —
Smith: So, ‘from the river to the sea’ will be included in that, in hate speech?
Assistant Minister: If it’s involved in inciting violence in the Australian community, then it would reach the threshold.
Smith: It’s Justin Smith filling in for Raf, it’s sixteen to nine at 774 ABC Melbourne. We’re talking to Matt Thistlethwaite, who’s the Assistant Minister for Immigration, about the announcement from the Prime Minister yesterday to combat antisemitism. Are you adopting all of Jillian Segal’s recommendations?
Assistant Minister: Yes, we are. We’re adopting the Segal report in full. A lot of the recommendations we’ve already adopted. Some of the law reforms that she proposed, some of the security measures have already been adopted. There’s further measures that we’ll adopt in the form of these changes to migration settings, to antisemitism, combating antisemitism laws. There’s educational reforms that will be undertaken. David Gonski will conduct a 12 month task force to review educational systems and ensure that it prevents and responds to antisemitism. The eSafety Commissioner will be looking at online safety to address antisemitism and hate speech and programs such as Together for Humanity, which has been a wonderful program in the education system that promotes not only the Jewish and Islamic communities, coming together with other communities as well, looking at training and resources for teachers to ensure that they can teach what antisemitism looks like and how we can combat that. Those are the sort of reforms that we’ll be adopting.
Smith: And this is before the courts, so we have to be mindful of what we’re saying. But the massacre at Bondi on Sunday, how will what we were told, what we’re talking about yesterday and what changes were announced by the government yesterday, how will it prevent something like Sunday?
Assistant Minister: Well, we’re ensuring that we’ve got the toughest antisemitism, combating antisemitism laws, that the country has ever had. We’re providing our police and security and intelligence organisations with the resources they need to ensure that they can identify people who may be radicalised and may undertake despicable actions such as this and ensure that they’re intercepted and that they’re arrested, hopefully before anything like this happens. So, our government is acting to make sure that we have the toughest set of measures to combat antisemitism, but at the same time providing our police and security and intelligence organisations with the resources that they need to try and stop this before it ever occurs again.
Smith: Into your portfolio, the man who’s in hospital charged with these murders, he has, he was born in Australia. How can the immigration policy address that? How’s that going to work?
Assistant Minister: Well, that person is an Australian citizen and that is the difficulty that the system has. What we’re aiming at looking at is people who seek to come to Australia on a visa, identifying if they’ve been involved in any hate speech and preaching division before coming here, they’ll be denied a visa if they are. But importantly, once they are granted a visa to Australia, if they’re involved in any of those activities and they could be deported. And that’s the new threshold that we’re implementing with these reforms.
Smith: Thank you very much for your time.
Assistant Minister: Appreciate your time, Justin.