Malcolm Turnbull has used his valedictory speech for 2015 to rebuke Coalition MPs who have singled out Australia’s Muslim population in the terrorism debate.
“It is very important that we ensure that we do not allow our enemies to divide us,” the prime minister told the chamber on Thursday, the last day of parliamentary sittings for the year. “That is what they seek to do. They seek to divide us and cause us to turn against, in this case, the Muslim Australians.”
Turnbull, who returned from climate change talks in Paris on Wednesday, highlighted the problems of integration confronting countries such as France. Australia, he argued, did not face the same kind of problem.
“We know from a practical point of view we are the most successful multicultural society in the world,” Turnbull said. He reiterated his call for Australians to stand together in the face of extremism.
“At the heart of all of this is a culture of mutual respect and a sense that all Australians, regardless of their race, their cultural background, their ethnicity, their religion, have a common share in this great Australian project. That is the critical thing – to ensure that all of our citizens believe they have a share in the great Australian project.”
This week some Coalition MPs renewed calls for the Muslim community to stamp out radicalisation.
The House of Representatives on Monday debated a motion brought by the Liberal National party backbencher George Christensen calling for action against radical Islam.
The Liberal backbencher Craig Kelly said: “These terror plots that have recently been in our country have all had one thread in common, and they have been undertaken in the name of a radical interpretation of Islam,” he told parliament on Monday. “If we are to have this debate … we must do it without it being bogged down and censored by the tyranny of political correctness.”
On Sunday the resources minister, Josh Frydenberg, told Sky News the Muslim community had to accept it had a “small but significant” problem with extremism. “We have to acknowledge that religion is part of this problem,” he said. “I would say it is a problem within Islam.”
Turnbull attempted to head off community tensions shortly after the shooting of police civilian worker Curtis Cheng in Parramatta by emphasising the inclusive nature of Australian society.
“Those people who decide that the response to the extremism of a very small minority is to vilify all Muslims are absolutely acting in a thoroughly counterproductive way,” the prime minister said in October. “That is the most counterproductive thing you can do.”
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This article was amended on 17 December 2015 to remove an inaccurate paraphrase of comments by the MP Craig Kelly. In his contribution in Parliament Kelly did not blame the Muslim population in general for national security threats. After urging people to overcome political correctness, Kelly said: “The other reason that we need to have this debate is that, if we continue on our current path, we know what the future will be. The future will be what we see in the town of Molenbeek in Brussels. I think Mark Steyn summed it up correctly. He said, ‘The barbarians are inside, and there are no gates.’
“This generation of politicians cannot allow this [to] happen to our country. What do we need to do? We need to tighten our migration policies. We need to admit that we have made mistakes in the past by allowing people who hold values completely contrary to everything that most Australians hold dear to migrate to this country. We need to say that if you want to migrate to this country and if you oppose democracy, if you have some sympathy for Islamic State, if you seek to advance sharia law, if you are against equal rights for women and if you do not share the Western freedoms and values that we enjoy, then Australia is not the country for you to migrate to.”
