ADJOURNMENT

Mr DREYFUS (Isaacs) (19:46): I have spent my public life working with purpose and a responsibility to leave our country fairer, safer and more generous. I want Australia to be a country where people are treated with dignity, where opportunity is shared and where no-one is made to feel that they do not belong. What deeply troubles me now is the wide and unrestrained distribution of hate that devalues meaningful engagement, undermines social inclusion and ferments intolerance, incitement, threats and violence.

Over recent years, political leaders and social media platforms have amplified hate with the consequence of turning some Australians bitterly against one another. It's a poisonous product being sold to all of us, particularly to our kids in their formative years. Our children and young adults continue to be targeted with content telling them who to hate, who to resent, who not to trust and who to blame.

The idea of using hate for maximising profit, influence and political advantage is not new, but it cannot be allowed to endure as something acceptable and normal when we know the damage that it produces. Parents have always carried a profound responsibility to teach their kids how to treat others and how to understand the world through that teaching. Each generation passes shared stories, values and lessons about how to live together and what kind of society we want to be.

Many parents tell me that they feel helpless because algorithms have robbed that role of teaching from them with deliberately curated and distorted commercial and political versions of how to see the world. It's happening in every space: the family home, at school, in shopping centres, on television, in the car and across every social media platform. Parents' ability to teach and keep their children safe is being eroded with this invisible intruder.

Political leaders have a particular responsibility to protect the people they serve by reducing that harm. Despite this important role, the political industrialisation of hate is well underway. In 2014, under the Abbott Liberal-National government, then attorney-general George Brandis and the Abbott government sought to strip away key protections in our federal racial discrimination laws in order to allow people the 'right to be bigots', arguing that free speech demanded it.

Our democracy depends on every Australian being able to participate in public debate. But freedom of speech is not absolute. Public speech carries responsibilities and is subject to legal limits that protect the equal rights afforded to all of us and that guard against real harm.

Freedom of speech is too often invoked as some noble principle by people whose actual purpose is rather less noble—to smuggle hatred into public life, to divide a nation and then demand immunity from criticism for having done so. Some people in public life have built entire careers on hate and division and have never had to answer for the harm they cause. We can draw a line from Brandis's 'right to be bigots' to the real-life examples of bigotry we've seen in recent years—racism towards immigrants and First Nations Australians, mockery of religious traditions, antisemitism, personal attacks on parliamentarians and their families and the scapegoating of gender-diverse people for political advantage.

Let's have robust discussions about real policy issues, but let's do so with a basic level of respect. Australians deserve confidence from their leaders, not contempt, bigotry and hate. When political leaders use hate, it's a deliberate choice.

It shows contempt for the collective efforts of generations of Australians from every background who have worked, sacrificed and in some cases given everything to defend and build this great nation. Yet those who seek to divide Australians in hateful ways depend every day on the work, enterprise and contribution of the very people they demonise. In my electorate, they're factory workers in Dandenong; small-business owners in Noble Park and Springvale and Mordialloc; nurses; aged-care workers; doctors; scientists; lawyers; tradies; restaurant and cafe owners; and more.

I see the consequences of what hate does to the communities I represent. I also think about what it means for the generations that come after us. I do not want for my grandchildren a future built on hate; I want them to grow up in a world in which every person has an equal claim to dignity, safety and belonging.

This is something every Australian wants for themselves, for their children and for their grandchildren. It's time for members of this parliament to deliver it.