Wednesday, 18 March 2026

 Iwan WALTERS (Greenvale) (17:46): I rise to grieve for Victorians, those from faith communities and those without, whose values, beliefs and congregations have been weaponised and used as a tool of division. In the debates we have in this place, in the policies we enact and in the leadership we provide, or we seek to provide, community safety comes first – not politics, not headlines: safety. People should – people must – feel safe walking down the street. They should feel safe sending their kids to school. They should feel safe at their place of worship. They should feel safe at a Hanukkah celebration. They should feel safe at a Christmas vigil in Campbellfield and at a mass in Coolaroo. They should feel safe celebrating Eid, and they should feel safe in their own neighbourhoods. This means standing up against all hate, ignorance and bigotry: antisemitic hate, Christian hate, Muslim hate – all irrational, destructive and toxic hatreds that demean our common humanity, that undermine the confidence people have in their community and that limit the capacity of Victorians to be themselves and to live peacefully, because every Victorian deserves to feel safe. Christians, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, Chinese, Indians, Greeks, Irish and Welsh – every Victorian deserves to feel safe.

Most Victorians understand this. They are good people, decent and fair, and they do not fall for that rubbish of division and hate. They want their families to be safe. They want their neighbours to be treated with respect. They want to know that if someone is targeted because of who they are, leaders will stand up. If a synagogue is targeted, leaders should stand up. If a church is targeted, leaders should stand up. If a mosque or a temple is targeted, leaders should stand up. If an Indian student, a Chinese family or a Sikh taxidriver face hate, leaders should stand up. They should not dodge the issue, not play politics but stand up, because when hate spreads it does not just hurt one person. It hurts families, it hurts communities, it makes people feel like they do not belong, and that hurts the whole state. That is why leadership matters.

There are politicians, though, who think division is a sport and who think blaming communities and stoking separatism will help them win elections. That is exactly how Pauline Hanson and One Nation operate. It is how they have operated for 30 years. When they are not seeking to unpick the workplace rights of Australians, division is their game. They pick a group, they blame them. They try to make people feel afraid, because fear is what keeps their politics alive, and we have seen what kind of politics that leads to. When Asian communities are blamed, Chinese Australians feel it on the street. When people are told there are no good Muslims, women wearing headscarves in public are abused. That is what fear politics does. It legitimates attacks on others.

It corrodes shared values. It pits groups against each other. This is the kind of politics that exploits faith communities for political gain. It is a corrosive form of politics that deepens social divisions. It weakens our collective identity as Victorians. The Liberal Party is standing beside Pauline Hanson, chasing the same votes, relying on the same preferences. The Victorian Liberals will say they support multicultural communities, but when it suits them politically they will throw those same communities under the bus. We have seen it before. We saw it when Peter Dutton singled out Lebanese Muslims. We saw it when Jacinta Price singled out Indian Australians. We saw it in this Parliament when one of their own members sorted Muslims into good and bad categories based on their own narrow, subjective assessment. This kind of language divides people. It diminishes proud Australians in their own country, and it makes them feel like they do not belong. It feeds the same politics One Nation thrives on, because One Nation spreads fear and division through hate. The Liberal Party might use softer words, but it is the same politics and it is starting to show up in other ways too.

There is another troubling trend in Victorian politics in this very building, and it needs to be called out. Some are trying to mislead faith communities. They are using religion as a political tool, trying to push the idea that if you are a person of faith you must belong to one political side. That is not true. Faith is not a political brand. It is not a campaign strategy, and it should never be used to win votes. For millions of Victorians faith is deeply personal. It shapes how we care for neighbours, how we pursue economic and social justice, how we show compassion, how we conceive and act upon our responsibilities in society. It does not belong to any political party, but some act and speak like they own the faith vote, like they speak for everybody. They do not, and when they do that they reduce whole communities, each with its own richness and diversity, down to politics. They divide people. That is not leadership, that is manipulation. All faith traditions are grounded in deep moral philosophy: caring for the poor, protecting the vulnerable, welcoming the stranger, seeking peace, walking humbly and acting justly. People of faith do not all think the same. They will sometimes disagree on how best to live those values in public life. They do not all vote the same, and that is a good thing. That is what a healthy democracy looks like. But when someone claims one party owns faith, even stepping into places of worship to say it, they are not defending religion; they are exploiting it and turning something personal into political leverage.

Let us be honest: this place, all sides of it, is made up of people from all backgrounds – different faiths and people with no faith at all. No one side owns that; no one side speaks for all of it. But we have seen where that kind of politics leads. The dangers of that sectarianism have been clear in Victoria’s own political history. It divides people. It creates mistrust. It makes neighbours look at each other differently. A lot of people came to this country, to our state, to my community, to get away from exactly that. They do not want it here. Here is the part that we cannot ignore. This kind of division does not just appear out of nowhere. It is pushed. It is fed. It is encouraged. That is exactly how Pauline Hanson and One Nation operate. They pick a group, they blame them and they stir fear. It is their whole model. But the problem is those in the Liberal Party keep standing beside them. They use those softer words but they are chasing the same votes and the same preferences, and when you stand with Pauline Hanson you are backing the same politics: fear, division and blaming communities. You do not get to say you support faith communities and then stand next to the people dividing them. People can see that.

There is also something troubling about the way that some politicians push petitions – dodgy questions built on the flimsiest of pretexts, half the story, trying to stir people up, trying to create outrage. It is not honest. If you have got a case, make it properly. Do not mislead people into signing something that does not reflect the truth; people deserve better than that. Democracy only actually works when people are told the truth, when arguments are made openly and in good faith. When we see politicians trying to mislead faith communities, trying to stir fear, trying to claim faith belongs to one side of politics, we should call it out, because protecting faith actually means not letting it be used like that, and we will not let the Liberal Party and Pauline Hanson divide our communities.

Events that celebrate this state’s different faiths and cultures are special. They are about community. They bring families together. They celebrate culture, tradition and faith. They show the best of Victoria. When people come together for Diwali, Lunar New Year, Eid, Christmas, Easter, Vaisakhi or Greek festivals, that is what you see: different traditions, different cultures, all sharing the same home, the same state. And when politicians go to those events it matters how they show up. They should come with respect for the culture, respect for the community, respect for the people in the room.

We have had plenty of these events where the Premier has used that moment to make something clear: people of faith are not just welcome in this state but a big part of it – they are pillars of it. There is something pretty hard to ignore here, because it does not make sense to turn around and call an iftar dinner political while at the same time trying to turn that exact event into a political fight in the media. People can see that, and the shadow minister knows it too, because he, like me, has heard directly from the people who were actually there. Leaders from Islamic Charity Projects Australia, people who said it was important, that it meant something, that it was a moment of healing and of real connection, not about politics, not about one party or another, but about the Premier as the leader of this state, as its head of government, saying to Muslim Victorians last week, ‘You are welcome here, you belong here, you are Victorian.’ And Muslim leaders have said the same thing. They have said that the iftar showed the kind of leadership we should be encouraging – something genuine, something empathetic, something bigger than politics.

It should have been a moment to clearly stand up against anti-Muslim hate, but instead those opposite turned it into politics. And let us be honest, it takes a fair bit of nerve and cant to spend years stirring division in communities and then turn around and say a community event is political. People can see through that. Respect in communities is something you cannot demand, it is something you earn. Standing up against hate earns it. Standing up for communities earns it. Begging for a microphone does not earn it. Leadership earns it. Leadership means standing up against the politics of hate, not saying one thing to one group and something else somewhere else, not showing up but staying silent when it matters and not pretending Pauline Hanson does not exist.

I want to say something directly to families across Victoria. To the Jewish mum who feels anxious about sending her child to school because of antisemitic hate, to the Muslim parents who worry when their daughter wears a hijab on the train, to the Sikh father who wonders whether his son will be teased at school because he wears a turban, to the Christian families who worry when they hear hate directed at people simply because of their faith, to the Chinese family who have told their kids to ignore the abuse they hear on the street, to the Indian parents whose children have been mocked for their name or their accent, to the parents who worry their child might face abuse simply because they are gay, I want you to hear this clearly: you belong here. Victoria is your home. We will not let any political party, Liberals or Pauline Hanson, divide our communities. The Labor Party will always stand with you. I will stand with you as a representative of our state’s most diverse community, Greenvale. We will stand up against hate. We will stand up for your safety, because every Victorian deserves to feel safe.

When one party spreads division and intolerance born of ignorance and another fails to repudiate it, that is not good enough. This government will always take a different approach. We will stand up against hate unambiguously and we will stand up for communities. We will stand with every Victorian ‍– Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, people of all faiths, people of all national and ethnic backgrounds – because they are our state, and Victoria is strongest when we stand together, not when politicians try to divide us, not when politicians seek to portray one party above all as the home of people of faith. That is the Victoria we in the Labor Party will always fight for.

Question agreed to.