Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
The government frontbencher Concetta Fierravanti-Wells says Muslims in Australia face prejudice as they arrive at the same “crossroads moment” faced by preceding waves of immigrants.
The minister for international development has used a contribution to a compilation rebooting Robert Menzies’ “forgotten people” speech and essays to reflect on the challenges Muslim Australians face, and to emphasise the importance of open dialogue inside and outside the community.
She says the various waves of immigrants since the early days of European settlement have all been “targeted” – from the Chinese, Irish and Germans, through the postwar cohort of Italians and Greeks, the Vietnamese and Lebanese in the 1970s and, more recently, Muslim groups.
“In that journey, each came to what I term their crossroads moment – that moment when the community says: we are part of Australia; we have come here; we have left our homes; our children were born here; we have made sacrifices to get here; they cannot be in vain; and we cannot let our positive contribution to Australia be judged by the actions of a few rotten apples in our community.”
Fierravanti-Wells says Muslims in Australia face prejudice. She recounts an anecdote from 2016 when she asked a group of business leaders: “If you had to hire someone and you had three CVs, all with equal qualifications, from Fred, Mario or Mohammed, who would you employ?
“No one spoke. The looks on their faces answered my question.”
She says to deal effectively with the security challenges presented by young Muslims being radicalised, Australia needs to understand why young people are vulnerable to those overtures, which include the difficulty of finding a job.
“To me, this is the essence of what Menzies was talking about,” Fierravanti-Wells says. “Rather than fostering hatred, deal with the issues head on. To resolve the challenge of radicalisation, it means working with communities at risk to ensure they not only own the problem but support them to own the solution.
“With hindsight, I do not believe that we have done so effectively in the past, but we very much need to do so in future.”
Fierravanti-Wells says the community must safeguard the wellbeing of its young people. “It is not a vague or general responsibility but one that now falls on parents, community leaders, friends and families who are close to someone who is disillusioned with their life or misguidedly find an attraction to Daesh or Isis.
“These people are the frontline – the first to see changes in a person who is becoming radicalised and stop that young person before he or she goes too far down the wrong path.
“I appreciate, from my many consultations across the spectrum of the Muslim communities, many are fearful because they are being targeted by some Australians who prefer to hate, rather than understand that the bad deeds are being done by a few.
“They can face prejudice, especially women who have often borne the brunt of abuse because of their attire. As Liberals, we believe in the inalienable rights and freedoms of all people, including freedom to practise their religion and beliefs without intimidation or interference, so long as those practices are within Australian law.”
The essay by Fierravanti-Wells appears in a collection edited by Paul Ritchie, a former speechwriter to Tony Abbott. In his original 1942 essay, Menzies argued that the cultivation of the spirit of hatred against the Japanese was not a proper instrument of war policy.
The new collection, which has contributions from Malcolm Turnbull, Abbott and a number of frontbenchers, will be launched at the federal council meeting of the Liberal party on Saturday afternoon.
Fierravanti-Wells says the original essay was written “at the height of the war and anti-Japanese propaganda”.
“Menzies’ concerns were that the propaganda was proceeding on the no doubt honestly held belief that a spirit of hatred amongst our own people is a proper instrument of war,” she says.
“He asked himself the question: Are Australians so lacking in the true spirit of citizenship that they need to be artificially filled with the spirit of hatred?
“Seventy-fve years on it is a question that still holds true. Today’s war is much more insidious, with atrocities abounding. Terrorism and the hatred it engenders can strike at the very heart of our society, literally as you walk down the street. This makes instilling fear and engendering hatred just as easy as in 1942.”
She notes that intelligence is vital in any war, and the Muslim community in Australia has made a positive contribution to combating security threats.
“Most of the recent terrorist attempts have been foiled following intelligence from the [Muslim] community. In alerting authorities they have put their duty to Australia, its laws and values ahead of competing concerns for family or friends whose actions sought to harm Australians.”
