Wednesday, 4 March 2026

 Joe McCRACKEN (Western Victoria) (18:51): (2371) Military operations are intensifying in the Middle East, and many Iranian Australians are watching events unfold with great interest, some with hope. Since 1979’s Islamic Revolution the Islamic Republic of Iran has imposed one of the most repressive regimes in the world. Few groups have suffered more under that regime than LGBT+ people, and I feel deeply for them, because in Iran today homosexuality is criminalised. It can result in imprisonment, it can result in public floggings and in the most extreme cases it can result in execution. There are documented cases of gay men being thrown from buildings. There are cases of forced confessions. Gay people face discrimination in employment, housing and education, and in many cases are forced to live in fear and live their lives in secrecy. Human rights organisations estimate that thousands of people have been executed in Iran on charges related to homosexuality since the revolution, with many more cases going unrecorded.

Now let us turn to Hamas. The Iranian regime is one of Hamas’s largest financial backers, providing an estimated $350 million a year funding weapons, training and military equipment. That funding has helped Hamas arm themselves with rockets, and they have fired them indiscriminately at Israeli cities. Hamas is not exactly a beacon of human rights either. Under Hamas rule in Gaza homosexuality is illegal, and many gay people face persecution, imprisonment and violence. It is quite simply the same ideology and repression as in Iran. Yet here is the extraordinary contradiction we increasingly see in parts of Victoria: we see people proudly waving Pride flags and declaring themselves champions of equality, and then in the very next breath we see them supporting Hamas, an organisation that would happily imprison them, beat them or much, much worse. It is a very strange kind of activism that on one day you are celebrating LGBT rights but then the next day you are supporting the exact regime that would counter that completely. Human rights cannot be selective. If you claim to stand for equality, then you must stand against those who try and crush it.

The action I seek is from the Premier, and it is simple: that she publicly condemn Hamas and the Iranian regime’s persecution of LGBT+ people and other minorities.