Clare O’Neil warns pro-Palestinian protesters are ‘menacing’ and ‘violent’
The Home Affairs Minister has declared pro-Palestinian protesters can’t be handed ‘a blank cheque’ for behaviour threatening the ‘cohesion of society’.
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil has declared pro-Palestinian protesters can’t be handed “a blank cheque for behaviour which threatens the cohesion of our society” and has slammed social media platforms for “germinating and growing the bigotry” that has plagued the country.
In a speech to the Australian National University, Ms O’Neil declared the behaviour of protesters at the offices of Labor MPs was “menacing, violent and unacceptable”.
“People will disagree. That is part of being in a democracy … But preventing vulnerable people from accessing government services is not respectful of our fellow citizens. Jamming open the door of the offices of politicians and screaming until the staff have to leave, shaking, is not peaceful protest,” she said.
“Painting blood red symbols of terrorism, or leaving childlike fake bodies outside offices, is not properly peaceful protest … Our social cohesion is our most valuable national asset, and we cannot allow conflicts on the other side of the world to undermine or erode it.”
In the wake of the growing protests, Anthony Albanese and his staff vacated his electoral office in January and opted to work out of a different location for safety reasons.
Other MPs who have been targeted include Bill Shorten, Peter Khalil and Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus.
Victoria, ACT and NSW police confirmed with the Australian earlier this month that no arrests over the vandalism to property had yet been made.
Ms O’Neil raised concern with the role of social media in particular in stoking further division.
“The scale and pace of the challenges to democracy which are being driven by social media are unprecedented in our history, and we can’t afford to spend another decade kicking the can down the road, deciding that putting rules in place is too hard,” she said.
“The filters, bubbles and echo chambers of social media, powered by opaque algorithms, germinate and grow this bigotry. They are not just straining the social fabric of our country. They are ripping at it, continuously, aggressively.”
The concern around social media platforms’ role in inflaming social division follow a push for the minimum age of users to be increased from 13 to 16 because of the nature of content available across platforms, which the Coalition has committed to doing within the first 100 days of government.
Reports of antisemitism and Islamophobia have both been steadily on the rise over the last eight months, with the Executive Council of Australian Jewry reporting a 738 per cent spike in anti-Semitic incidents between October and December 2023 and the Islamophobia Register Australia revealing there had been a 13-fold increase in Islamophobic attacks in the seven weeks following October 7.
“Right now, discrimination is part of the pervasive life experience for both our Jewish and Muslim communities,” Ms O’Neil said.
“Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are far bigger problems than I think most Australians realise.”
Ms O’Neil’s comments come as the Commonwealth and state governments are being urged to crack down on the display of Hamas and Hezbollah emblems, which is banned under federal law earlier this year.
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