Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to condemn the gutless people who vandalised a prayer hall at Rocklea in my electorate of Moreton a few days ago. They snuck in like thieves in the night and damaged a community prayer hall for no good reason. Obviously these are tense times in Australia but this attack—especially using graffiti of a cross on this hall—is an affront to so many religions. It is not only an affront to the Indonesian Muslim community who worship there but also to Christians. I am sure everybody on both sides of the chamber would condemn that.

Mr Van Manen interjecting—

I take that interjection from the member for Forde, which I will come back to in a minute in order to make another connection. These are tense and difficult times but we can only be good Australian citizens if we talk about the things that join us—the links we have. To quote the national anthem: 'For those who come across the seas we've boundless plains to share; with courage let us all combine to Advance Australia Fair.'

This is a time for us to show courage. This is a time for community leaders and neighbours to step up and show courage, and show what makes Australia so great. I am especially annoyed that an Indonesian establishment was attacked. To paint the picture: this is not a mosque, it is a prayer hall. It does not have a minaret. I could understand if you lived next door to a mosque that had a muezzin calling worshippers to pray five times a day, that might be annoying. Church bells might be annoying; any noise might be. But this is near the Brisbane markets and the Brisbane golf club in an industrial area. There are some houses there, but I spoke to one of the gentlemen who used to live there, Gary Lobley, who I helped out during the floods—this whole area flooded back in 2011—and he said it was well accepted in the community. He was disappointed as well.

The reason I am particularly disappointed that the Indonesian community in Brisbane was attacked is because Brisbane has such a strong connection with Indonesia. The member for Forde's last name is Dutch, I assume; I think your connection is more with the Dutch rather than the East Indies. But Wacol, just down the road from Rocklea, was the only spot in Australia where we actually let another government set up. That was during World War II when the Dutch East Indies government fled from the Japanese advance and set up in Wacol. Down at Cowra we imprisoned a lot of Dutch prisoners. They were mainly Indonesian freedom fighters, many who had been imprisoned after the protests of 1928.

In 1942 they were evacuated from the Boven-Digoel camp, which is actually called Tanah Merah, which means 'red earth', and there is a suburb in Forde with that same name—probably the same origin. So those prisoners came down by boat and then got on a train in Townsville. When they were being taken down to Cowra to be interned with the Japanese, Germans and Italians, they slipped out a note that was picked up by a railway worker, and he took it to the trade union movement and then an entire connection was established with these political prisoners—because they were not criminals; they were political prisoners. Then Curtin, to his credit, actually made these people be released, and they worked hard to make sure the Japanese were thrown out. They joined the air force at Bundaberg—there was a big Dutch air force base at Bundaberg and, I think, in Darwin. They worked hard to get rid of the Japanese. Then at the end of World War II there was a famous incident—which is detailed in the book Black Armada, by the journalist Rupert Lockwood, which I am reading at the moment; I found out this story when I was in Jakarta recently—where the trade union movement actually boycotted. From 23 September 1945 in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, Indonesian merchant seamen walked off Dutch ships because they were being loaded to go back and reoccupy the East Indies. Those ships were held in Australia for four years. We then became the first nation to recognise Indonesia. I was fortunate enough to be here when Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono came to Australia and gave that magnificent speech in the parliament. So we have a great connection with Indonesia, they are good citizens and I am sure that this bit of graffiti is not a sign of what our true respect for the Indonesian community is.