Tim Wilson
Goldstein · Liberal Party · Australia
“Now, we see even more immoral leadership as the Prime Minister and his ministers refuse to audit whether federal money has found its way into the hands of organised crime through the CFMEU Labor cartel.”
“The silence that we heard from our prime minister and our national leaders every step of the way led to horrific incidents like, on 10 November, the protests at the front of Central Shule in Caulfield South in the Goldstein electorate. It led eventually to the most horrific terrorist incident on our most famous national beach.”
“The idea that you would put the social solidarity of the most marginalised section of our community on a ballot paper knowing it would fail is an abrogation of leadership and responsibility and something I do not think this prime minister will ever be able to shake.”
“I've recently been spending a lot of time thinking about what moral government is and what type of government seeks to divide citizens, feed corruption and break trust within the community. The short and sharp of it is that it's an immoral government.”
“But to engage in citizenship stacking, where they deliberately went around and targeted electorates and got people to become Australian citizens on the eve of a national poll, is absolutely disgraceful.”
“There is hope. We can have a moral government again that's focused on uniting Australians and building trust and taking Australia forward together. But the only way we can do that is by seeing a change of government and the end of the Albanese government.”
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“The report continues: The cause of the collapse of the CFMEU was not from within, it came from the top. To continue: … it was shocking to see so much crime, so much corruption, such a perversion of values. The CFMEU was no longer on the right side of civil society, it was proudly on the wrong side. The Union was no longer the champion of the working class— in fact, it turned to— … looking after gangsters, standover men, bikies, heroin traffickers, and even killers. By the end of this investigation I have been left with the empty feeling that the … Victorian branch of the CFMEU was no longer a trade union, it was a crime syndicate.”
“But let's go to what the report says: But from those great heights the CFMEU in Victoria collapsed into a squalid mess. It slid from being a union which fought hard for workers to one which started a fight just for the sake of it. It devolved from being a union which honoured the dignity of working Australians to a union which cultivated the company of underworld figures. It deteriorated from being progressive, tolerant and respectful— I would contest that, but I'll accept the author's claim— into a violent, hateful, greedy rabble. It degenerated from being a union where people were respected for their honesty and decency— again, a contestable claim— to one where a good person, a decent person who spoke out against corruption, was shouted down and told they were a "dog," or a "rat", or— a word I will not mention in this parliament.”
“We know that Labor has actively sought to undermine the limitations that we want to put on the flow of cash that has gone into redundancy funds. Why? Because it provides a slush fund for the unions to wash money around as they see fit. But, when it comes down to this report that was tabled by the author in the CFMEU inquiry in Queensland today, we get a shocking picture of the lived reality of union corruption that has been presided over during this period. You just need to go to the report. You can quote from it directly, but, of course, we can't quote from it directly as a document tabled in this parliament, because the Leader of the House refused to allow it to be tabled in the lead-up to question time. He wouldn't make it a permanent and public document so that it can never, ever be silenced or whitewashed again.”
“While the minister stands here and boasts at the dispatch box that there are all these people removed from the CFMEU who have serious allegations to answer, what she won't tell you is that they're resigning just before they're sacked, and then they're walking over to the Electrical Trades Union to propagate the business model—the CFMEU-Labor business model—so that they can continue the extortion racket that is going on in public projects in this country. That's why the Labor Party wants multi-employer bargaining. It empowers the unions to engage in an extortion racket of public money to drive the cartel kickbacks and send them flowing through from the unions to organised crime, and some of it is ending up in the coffers of the Australian Labor Party.”
“We don't want their tainted cash.' But what we know from AEC disclosures from just last week is that that has been exposed as a falsehood. They might say they're not going to take the cash, but they seem happy to cash the CFMEU's cheque. When you think about the $15 billion that has been laundered through these public projects into the benefit of organised crime and bikie gangs and about how now some of those cartel kickbacks are going into the Labor Party's coffers, it directly compromises the foundations of this government. More than that, the licence of this government and their willingness to tackle corruption is brought directly under question.”
“There will be further questions, because we know exactly the consequences of when the minister won't reveal this information—she is running away from the consequences of CFMEU-Labor corruption because she knows how directly it connects back to the heart of the Albanese government. We know it. The Australian taxpayer knows it, and now an independent report to the CFMEU commissioner has confirmed it. It's not just that part of the dishonesty that we are facing from this report. We know—once it was revealed that the CFMEU had become an enabler of organised crime and bikie gangs to launder money through Victorian government big build projects, the Prime Minister and various state premiers and leaders from the Australian Labor Party said: 'We'll never take money from the CFMEU anymore.”
“If you do have it, release it.' It's very clear to me that the minister knew full well that she didn't want to receive a copy because she knew how scandalous it was, and it took whistleblowers coming forward and saying the report had been redacted and the information had been kept from the public square—it is now clear that the minister is engaging in 'see no corruption, hear no corruption' so she does not have to answer for CFMEU-Labor corruption. She also can't tell us what reports she received. We asked today in question time what version of the report she had on 9 February—whether it was the full report, a redacted report or the report that excluded two chapters. She hasn't answered that.”
“Yes, it was absolutely a report that was commissioned by the CFMEU administrator. Yes, we now know that she received a copy of it on 9 February—only a few days ago. But what she's refusing to admit is whether she's been in contact with the CFMEU administrator, whether she asked for a copy of the report—we wrote to the minister last year saying: 'This report has been published. You should be requesting it, and why haven't you requested it?”
“Because those chapters go to the heart of the CFMEU-Labor cartel business plan, which has seen $15 billion of taxpayer money laundered through a process of Albanese government funded projects and Victorian government projects under the Allan government. And it's found its way where? Into the hands of organised crime and bikie gangs. This is the most disgraceful example and abuse of public money that could ever have been proposed. In fact, had someone suggested at the start of this inquiry that that was what was going to be revealed, I suspect most of the members on this side of the chamber would say it was impossible. This is now the lived reality of the CFMEU-Labor cartel of corruption and the consequences. The tragedy is the minister still won't answer basic information in this House.”
“Yesterday, Transparency International released its latest report on corruption in Australia, and, under the Albanese government, corruption has increased and our international ranking has fallen. We are seeing explicitly why in the report that was finally tabled for public consumption looking at CFMEU corruption in the context of the state of Victoria. This report, which we know was provided to the CFMEU administrator on 1 December last year by testimony from Geoffrey Watson SC in the Wood inquiry in Queensland—it has been exposed in the Nine press that there has been a deliberate attempt to redact two chapters of this report. Why are they seeking to redact those chapters?”
“Today is a landmark day in the exposure of union corruption in this country. We know that, last year, Geoffrey Watson SC was commissioned to deliver a report into the corruption of the Queensland CFMEU—not just the corruption but the violence. The report directly catalogued the scale of corruption that sits at the heart of the Queensland CFMEU, including a time following a Queensland Labor government election when CFMEU officials walked into consultations, stood over and intimidated public servants and said, 'You work for us now.' This is a fundamental issue of corruption that goes to the heart of the CFMEU-Labor model in Queensland, and now we are seeing it directly in the context of Victoria.”
“My question is to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. Revelations in the Age today expose that the Prime Minister's handpicked CFMEU administrator has requested the deletion of two chapters from the report of the independent probe highlighting the CFMEU-Labor cartel, which calculated that $15 billion of washed taxpayer subsidies have ended up in organised crime. In your previous answer, you said that the report was received by your office on 9 February. Did your office seek a copy before that date, and which version did you get—the full version, the redacted version or the version with two chapters missing?”
“It shows $15 billion of public money has been laundered from Albanese government projects and Allan government projects, and the Allan government knew exactly what was happening. They turned a blind eye to the theft of public money going to organised crime and to bikie gangs. The Albanese government's response is to keep corrupt power structures in place in the CFMEU and take it out of the media cycle. But, because we know that two chapters were removed, I seek leave to table this report so it can never be whitewashed from history again. Leave not granted. Running interference for CFMEU corruption.”
“Well, it has all now been revealed. When Geoffrey Watson SC started an inquiry into the Queensland CFMEU, what he found was CFMEU officials standing over public servants and directing them like they were the government. At the end of last year, Mr Watson outlined that he was going to table this latest report about CFMEU corruption in Victoria. We FOI'd it. We wrote to the minister. No response. Now we know why she's refusing to answer our questions and release documentation—because a secret report has now been revealed for the nation to see, titled Rotting from the top . That is a lived reality of the CFMEU Labor cartel and the kickbacks that are being paid. And what does this report show?”
“I'm very happy to be supporting the principles of this process and this legislation, because I think it goes right to the heart of the responsibility, particularly of those who have not worn a uniform, to those who are prepared to step up and do so.”
“For those people who make that sacrifice and are prepared to wear the uniform and defend our nation, what we should want at the end of their service is not just to provide them with the support they need to move on from their service. Of course, in many cases, we want them to continue to act as reservists continuing to support the ADF. But we should also want those who cease their service to go on and live healthy and productive lives. By 'healthy and productive lives' we don't mean just keeping them alive; we mean healthy and productive lives where they form families and live out what they deserve as a consequence of their service. It's what they fought or enlisted for.”
“They were looking at the parallels and overlaps between the two, whether there were things they could learn from the ADF and equally whether there were things they could do to support the ADF in their important work and to support people after they finish. Identity, place and purpose, which are connected, once removed raise deep issues for many people about where they fit in the world and the role they play, particularly if they have the consequences of conflict lived out in their memories. That can significantly impact their mental health and wellbeing. This bill to me is a fundamental proposition about how we show, honour and respect our veterans and how there is nearly no end to the responsibility we share to invest in our veterans so they can live out the best of their healthy lives.”
“It is going to be one that is not going to be solved with a flick of a switch. It's going to be from a nation that commits to invest in their veterans to provide pathways. I know that there is already a lot of work that is done in this space. Many years ago I went and saw the St Kilda Football Club, which at the time was not in my electorate but now actually is in my electorate due to a redistribution by the AEC. They highlighted that a lot of the challenges that veterans have once they cease their service is equivalent to the sense of identity and place that footballers have. That's their commentary, not mine. But I can see what it means—where your identity and your sense of purpose in life is melded and what happens when that sense of purpose is taken away. It's not the only profession, of course.”
“But that doesn't mean the community doesn't have an enduring concern about their health and wellbeing, whether they're in the community or elsewhere. The overwhelming majority of Australians fundamentally understand the debt and the burden this nation owes those people who wear the uniform in defence of our country, and they want to see agencies and entities exist to support them. We have the DVA, but making sure we have the Defence and Veterans Service Commissioner is an important part of that because we want to address the deep problems of PTSD, mental health and wellbeing, stopping suicide so that service in our nation doesn't become a pathway to a reduction in quality and standard of living. We know that there's a lot of work to be done. It's an enduring responsibility.”
“These bills are important because they're about acknowledging our responsibility to our veterans. They're about acknowledging the responsibility this nation has to those people who are prepared to make a sacrifice in pursuit of our national interest. I know the member for Herbert has already given a stirring speech. When I go to the RSLs in the Goldstein electorate, this topic of what support we're providing for our veterans continues to come through. A lot of the RSLs in my electorate were established at a time after the Second World War, and, as a consequence, a lot of the veterans that now visit those RSLs are from more recent conflicts, and World War II veterans tend to be lesser in number in comparison to years past.”
“The response must be that our nation must back those people who are prepared to take risks to back themselves, and stand up for those who can't fulfil that service in pursuit of defence of our country and, of course, the broader environment of peace and security around the world. That's the basis on which we always supported a royal commission into defence and veteran suicide and ongoing support for defence and veterans services, with their need for ongoing support and assistance. We know that, tragically, as a consequence of the royal commission, so many men and women who have served this nation honourably and in a decent way continue to endure the consequences of conflict and the risks that lead to a significant reduction in quality of life after their term of service.”
“I rise to speak on these important bills, the Defence and Veterans' Service Commissioner Bill 2025 and the Defence and Veterans' Service Commissioner (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2025, and to support the work of the member for Herbert, all the members of this parliament who have done their duty in service to our nation and everybody who has done their duty in service to our nation in the defence forces. Public service in all its forms is a noble calling, but to be prepared to risk and sacrifice one's own personal, physical and mental wellbeing for the task of defending our nation is one of the most noble things anybody can pursue.”
“That's why his life and legacy are such an achievement and why so many of us are so impassioned to acknowledge his life and legacy. We just want to wish his family all the best. May he rest in peace, because his legacy most resolutely endures.”
“So I fully understand why everybody is so emphatic and warm in their acknowledgement of Luch and his legacy to this place. I can't even imagine the devastation that his family must feel for his early passing, and we can only express on behalf of all members the most incredible outpouring of grief and support for them at this very difficult time. But they should also take comfort that a life well lived in service of others is one of the greatest contributions that anybody can make. And he did that perhaps not in the way that many members in this House do—through their performative dimensions—but with a quiet and enduring resilience to support others to do their best to serve the community as part of the achievement of this great Commonwealth.”
“As the old saying goes, no-one would ever know how he voted because he was there, he was always willing and he was always able to assist. So, in one sense, he lived his life through this building and through the success and the contributions of the members, and that's why there's so much emotion from so many members in response to his tragic passing at such a young age. I was on Annabel Crabb's documentary The House , which stepped through how parliament itself works. In one sense, Luch was the embodiment of the parliament itself and how it, at least in spirit, wanted to operate—cooperative, engaging and focused squarely on the best interests of the people of Australia, lived out through the parliamentarians who have the great privilege of serving here.”
“He was as much a part of the institution, and his commitment to the democracy that we all love and participate in was not just a temporary thing: it was enduring. To pass away at only 59 years of age really is one of the most devastating things, I'm sure, for him and his family because he gave his life over to service of our great Commonwealth and its democracy. He represented the best of the Public Service and particularly the Parliamentary Service. He was diligent, he was discreet, he was loyal and he was respectful. I never met a member in this place who ever had anything bad to say about him, only that he was ever anything other than entirely willing to support and assist with a complete blindness to party allegiances, responsibilities.”
“I'm the guy who kind of runs the show.' From that moment on, he was not just charming, endearing and warm throughout my entire parliamentary service—iteration 1 and iteration 2—but a permanent fixture of this place. This institution will endure well beyond any of us. We are a temporary beings that come and go. We have the great privilege of representing electorates. The building itself, since 1988, has been a symbol of and a testament to our democracy. It's a symbol of what makes this country great. But sitting beneath the surface of the physical structure are the people who work in this building every day, who bring it to life. Luch was one of those people who bridged the divide between the perpetual and the temporary in this building, and who celebrated our great democracy.”
“I remember at the end of last year, as I left the building at the end of 2025, on the way out I said goodbye to Luch. Like everybody else in this chamber, when we said goodbye at the end of last year, I thought we were saying goodbye for a couple of months. I never thought that my passing reference and good wishes for the holiday season and Christmas would be the last time that I would see him. I remember, as the previous speaker did, when I was first elected. It was in 2016. It was one of those experiences. You're brought into the House of Representatives. You get shown by the Speaker the parading of the chamber. The enormity of the flowing eucalypt walls is overpowering. When I was talking to people, this fellow started chatting away to me and I asked politely, 'What's your job?' And he introduced himself: 'I'm Luch.”
“We got through them all, Deputy Speaker! They're all of diverse backgrounds. They've all made an incredible contribution to our community, and, more than anything else, they have embodied the values and the ideals that sit behind the Goldstein medal—that no matter your age you can show responsibility and you can show leadership to inspire others to do good in this world. I want to say to all the recipients: congratulations on what you have done; congratulations on what you are doing and what is yet to be done.”
“Last year we had an incredible array of local students who got the Goldstein medal: Abby Larsen of Beaumaris North Primary School; Zoe Bond of Beaumaris Primary School; Ruth Sharma of Bentleigh West Primary School; Allie Howard from Black Rock Primary School; Rose Muirhead of Brighton Beach Primary School; Anastasia Tsikaris of Caulfield Primary School; Gabriella Perdikis from Caulfield South Primary School; Julian Tyler of Caulfield South Primary School; Frankie Bokser of Gardenvale Primary School; Isla Fox of Hampton Primary School; Joanna Szeto of McKinnon Primary School; Chloe Lightfoot of Moorabbin Primary School; Lachlan Warfe at Ormond Primary School; Milla Bade of Sacred Heart Parish School; Scarlett Williams of Sandringham East Primary School; Darcy Tolmer of Sandringham Primary School; Jack Askew of Southmoor Primary School; Leona Cunningham of St Catherine's Moorabbin; Skye Pullman of St James Catholic Primary School; Freya Bradley of St Leonard's College, primary; James Lockhart of Stella Maris Catholic Primary School; Zoe Eccles of Tucker Road Bentleigh Primary School; Lily Gorvett-Page of Beaumaris Secondary College; Isabella Kyrebel of Brighton Secondary College; Mary Lazar of Firbank Grammar School, secondary; Maleesha Dharmadasa of McKinnon Secondary College; Sarina Azad of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart College Bentleigh; Holly Turner of Sandringham College; Patrick Wilson of St Leonard's College, secondary; Keira Kinsella of Star of the Sea College; Richard Gomes of Haileybury college, primary; Bella Yap of Haileybury college, primary; Mona Bachmann of Kilvington Grammar School, primary; Henry Duncan of Kilvington Grammar School, secondary; and Christine Vrahnas of Cheltenham Secondary College.”
“The Goldstein medal acknowledges the incredible efforts of so many young residents in the Goldstein community who embody the values of their school, stand up and take responsibility and most importantly show leadership at a young age. We established the medal in 2016 to acknowledge young Australians in our community who stand up and take responsibility for themselves and others, but more importantly it's a pathway to recognise them and encourage them to keep going. Of course the Goldstein medal is named after the electorate's namesake, Vida Goldstein, who was a suffragist who stood up for the right of women to vote, to buy property and to enter marriages in the same terms as men.”
“But when the government deliberately strips apart a pathway to stop the abuse of alcohol and drugs within a community, without any recognition of how it harms those most vulnerable, it has its priorities wrong. It cannot be solved through the imposition of a new commissioner or a new bureaucracy from Canberra thinking they know best or there is a better way they can impose on community. That's the challenge of this bill. It doesn't create the structural solutions that we need—”
“If this government was really serious about improving the welfare of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, particularly in community, it would revisit its demonisation and targeting of the healthy welfare card, which went a long way to stopping the abuse of alcohol within communities. It is particularly setting children up for failure right from the outset because of the spread of fetal alcohol syndrome. Unfortunately, this government's record on these issues is not as good as it would like it to be. There's a reason there are still so many problems around closing the gap for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Let's be under no ambiguity about this: it is a disgrace that we still have the scale of the gap that exists for our Indigenous and First Nations people. We absolutely should want them to live out their best lives.”
“We know full well that there's already a commissioner for children at the Human Rights Commission. I have served as Australia's Human Rights Commissioner. There is already a commissioner responsible for children. There is already a commissioner for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. These bills are some sort of admonishment, saying they're not doing their job. They are. They're working as hard and as diligently as possible. But we know that we have to support community based solutions to empower communities, rather than support Canberra to impose its solution without any sense of direction or clarity about how to improve people's lives.”
“The thing that disappoints me about these bills, the National Commission for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People Bill 2026, and the National Commission for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People (Transitional Provisions) Bill 2026, is that—as with so many of the things this government seeks to do—they create another bureaucracy. Rather than looking at empowerment in the community, they look at how they can impose another central, big-government, big-Canberra solution on communities that need to be built from the ground up. That's the challenge so many of us have with these bills. We know the data and the consequences of decades of Canberra thinking it can tell Indigenous communities how they should live their lives and imposing solutions on them rather than empowering them.”
“In fact, without wanting to verbal him, my good friend Mick Gooda says that if we do something to make sure we address the challenges of the next generation—even if it means recognising the limitations of what we can do today for those alive—we will materially improve the future for all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people hereafter. I agree; he is a good friend of mine. The Tudor family established the Melbourne Indigenous Transition School to ensure that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children have a pathway to live the best of the opportunities of our country. That is central, but one of the things that's clear is that the best way to deliver change, the best way to advance the interests of the next Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander generation, is to work on the ground and in the community.”
“There is no ambiguity about the support that I would hope comes from all members of this chamber on the importance of making sure the next generation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children has the same economic opportunities and advancement that every other Australian child has. We want them to go on and get a good education, to grow up in a healthy and safe environment and, more importantly, to then mature in a way that enables them to live out the best of their lives. There are many institutions that seek to do exactly that, from the many social support organisations in cities and rural and regional areas throughout schooling—I know this has been a big focus of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander policy for a long time.”
“We in this parliament need to stand up for small business, family business, sole traders and the self-employed and back them in because they are the employers of the nation. We need to stand with small businesses and stand up for their right to be successful and to prosper. They have a right to their profitability and we need to encourage them to pursue it, because the next generation of Australians are going to grow their wealth and their economic opportunity by backing themselves. The consequence, if we do that, will be a thriving economy made up of those people who chance their hand, take a risk and back themselves. The consequence if we don't do that is what we are living with right now: rising costs, businesses collapsing—and, with them, private jobs—and a private-sector employment crisis.”
“But what they did want to do was cover their tracks, because once she was caught out with her interjection in accusing businesses that had collapsed of being 'dodgy', she gave the middle finger, frankly, to millions of Australians who have backed themselves and who now know they can't rely on their government. We need to make change in this country because we have, of a program that has been introduced by this government, only one-fifth or thereabouts of the total funding being accessed, because small businesses don't need more bureaucracy; small businesses need a lifeline of support, and they are being choked by the Albanese government because of inflation, interest rates and higher costs. What we need now more than ever are small business, family business, sole traders and the self-employed having the back of their government.”
“And while large businesses enjoy the benefits of scale and can defray these costs across millions of items, small businesses get exposed at the pinch point of the Australian economy, and they're the ones most likely to feel the consequences and, tragically, as we know, have collapsed. Now, when we confronted the minister about this only last week in the parliament, she said that maybe those businesses were 'dodgy'. That is the level of empathy from this government towards people who have lost their livelihoods—you're a bit 'dodgy'. That's the attitude of the Albanese government and the Minister for Small Business—no empathy, no concern.”
“So when inflation goes up, their tax bill goes up as well—in addition to the problems of industrial relations, inflation that this government has legislated. And make no mistake, this government has put in a series of measures over the past three years which are still going through our industrial relations landscape, which are making it more expensive, more complex and harder to employ Australians. So if you've got a growing small business, you'll be finding it harder to employ the people you need to be successful and you'll have to pay a higher price. And every single one of these costs is not picked up by some small business owner; it has to be passed on to the consumer.”
“Never have more small businesses collapsed than under this government, and it's pretty clear the reason why. We have a cost of small business crisis in this country. We've had recent data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics which clearly shows that, as a consequence of government spending, inflation is out of control. So many small businesses rely on loans to be able to manage their liquidity or to buy assets, and interest rates are going up. A lot of them depend on non-bank lenders, so they pay a higher rate because they have a lower level of security; therefore, they are doubly impacted every time inflation persists and interest rates go up. But it's not just that they deal with the consequences of state taxes. Increasingly, state taxes are indexed against inflation.”
“Small business, family business, sole traders and the self-employed are the backbone of the Australian economy. They're more than just that, though. They are the people who stand up and back themselves to be able to get ahead to support themselves and their families. They are the employers of the nation. They are the people who take risks and who should enjoy the reward and responsibility that comes with those risks. But we know very well that things are not alright in the land of small business. Under the Albanese government, we have seen the highest number of small business insolvencies on record. We have seen 41,000 small businesses go insolvent under the Albanese government. Last year, we had the highest number of small business insolvencies in Australia's history on record.”
“I move: That this House: (1) condemns the Government for presiding over the insolvency of 41,749 small businesses since being elected; (2) notes that: (a) 2025 was the worst calendar year for business insolvencies since records began in 1999, with more than 14,649 businesses collapsing; and (b) this Prime Minister now has the worst record of any Prime Minister for business insolvencies with an average of 2,938 businesses going under each quarter; (3) further condemns the Government for its failure to recognise the scale of the small business crisis and its lack of urgency in responding to record insolvencies; (4) acknowledges that behind every insolvency statistic is a family, an employee and a local community bearing the cost of the Government's policy failures; and (5) calls on the Minister for Small Business to urgently review the Government's policy settings that are focused on increasing costs, complexity and uncertainty for small and family businesses.”
“The consequence, if the Iranian people are successful—and we always look for opportunities where we can intervene to support them in achieving their shared objective of self-determination—is we will have an Iran that is free of the mullahs and their tyrannical regime, a world where we're less likely to have radical extremist ideology that seeks to oppress people and less state sponsored terrorism in Iran, in the region and around the world. But if we fail, we know there will be a perpetuation of those terrors and those horrors on the people who have done nothing more than want to stand up and say they want their voice, their freedom, and to decide their future.”
“We must, of course, support them in their actions as much as possible and give them comfort and hope. And to those people in Australia who have family members on the frontline standing up against the Iranian government, you have our sympathy and our support. I've had people from the Iranian community in Goldstein, as well as from across the country, contact me and say, 'Please keep speaking up on this, because it matters to the people behind the Tehran curtain.' Now is the time for us to stand up and to be called to account; now is the time for all of us to show solidarity where it belongs.”
“And make no mistake: all civilian deaths are a tragedy; it does not matter the context in which it occurred. I spoke about how so many of those people went out into the streets and stood up for the civilian victims of Gaza—and fair enough, they have every right to do so—yet we have seen a conspicuous conspiracy of silence from the same core group within the community about the 30,000 people who have been murdered by the IRGC in Iran. They have not stood up for the people of Iran, and we need to call this out because it highlights the double standard and Jew hatred that occurs within some sections of the community if they won't stand up against the oppression of the Iranian people. Now is the time people are rising up and now is the time that we must stand by them.”
“To this day, it is still distressing that it took the firebombing of synagogues, sponsored by the Iranian government, for our government to act and acknowledge the IRGC and its state sponsored terrorism as a threat not just to Australia but to the international community. Now we face a choice about how we're going to respond. We know that this challenge is going to be one where we have to stand by the Iranian people at every step. Last week I stood before Parliament House and spoke at a protest. I spoke specifically about how disappointing it is that so many people who used to flood the capital cities of our nation for the victims of the Israel-Hamas conflict—one where terrorist organisations attack the free state and then that free state chooses to respond to defend their citizens.”
“We know full well that they continue to target people, shut down pathways to communicate with the rest of the world and stop us all bearing witness to the horrors of the IRGC. What's tragic about this situation, more than anything else, is we have known for a long time that this situation would come. We know the IRGC simply takes power through force, and that's why we wanted to list them as a terrorist organisation in the last term of parliament. I remember when I was involved in the listing of Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organisations, it was a relatively straightforward process.”
“We know what happens to women; we know what happens to homosexuals; we know what happens to other minority groups. And it's not just those groups, as the IRGC seek to export their terrorism around the world. We've seen, in the case of Australia, where they have financed directly and engaged in state sponsored terrorism against synagogues in Melbourne. We also know they have a direct connection with the illegal tobacco trade, which they used to finance attacks on our soil. Tragically, some government policies assist them in that process of profiteering from the practice to use it to promote things like antisemitism and violence against Australians of Jewish heritage. We know the consequences that have befallen the people who have chosen to stand up against the mullahs in Tehran; 30,000-odd people have been reported.”