Wednesday, 14 May 2025

Extremism

Anasina GRAY-BARBERIO (Northern Metropolitan) (18:25): (1626) The adjournment matter I have this evening is for the Premier, and the action I seek is for her to urgently implement the remaining recommendations of the 2022 inquiry into extremism in Victoria. Premier, we are seeing a disturbing upward trend towards far-right extremism fuelled by division and distrust, and Victoria is not immune to these acts of violence. In just the last few months alone we have seen neo-Nazis disrupt the Anzac Day dawn service, booing Uncle Mark Brown’s Welcome to Country; white supremacists disrupting and intimidating people attending refugee and asylum seeker rallies; neo-Nazi boot camps in Elwood training men, including minors, for combat; anti-trans activists taking their hatred to the streets; and neo-Nazis holding anti-black, anti-Asian and Islamophobic banners on the Monash Freeway before the election.

In other jurisdictions, like New South Wales, the community resilience approach to countering extremism is premised on the concept that this issue is a social issue with security implications, not a security issue with social implications, indicating that engagement with communities is fundamental to protecting young people from radicalisation.

Researcher Jordan McSwiney has warned that the far right in Australia are the most active, visible and organised they have ever been. Concerningly, there are reports that the neo-Nazis are trying to form their own political party to legitimise their bigotry and increase their reach.

While we welcome the recent expansion of protected attributes under the anti-vilification laws and acknowledge these reforms are an important step towards justice against extremist discrimination, there is still more work to be done. The parliamentary inquiry into extremism in Victoria heard how sophisticated the far right are at indoctrinating and recruiting young people, exploiting economic inequality, institutional distrust, social isolation and prejudices in the community to pull people into their extremist groups. To stop right-wing extremism at the prevention level we need to fix the key drivers, like poverty, social exclusion, lack of opportunity and technological structures that allow disinformation and misinformation to proliferate. Premier, given the global challenges posed by extremism, we can no longer delay implementing the remaining recommendations of the extremism inquiry from 2022.