Mr CHARLES(4.28 p.m.) —My grievance today is with the honourable member for Oxley (Ms Hanson), who has unleashed in our nation a debate which is on the one hand laudable and on the other abominable. I will make clear the differentiation between the two in my remarks today. Of the many issues she has raised, I wish to address in my brief time, firstly, multicultural and Aboriginal affairs and, secondly, immigration. Let me say at the outset that I believe deeply and passionately in the philosophical concept of freedom of speech.

Among those basic rights which I hold dear to the foundation of a democratic society are freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of assembly and freedom of religion. Foremost among those is freedom of speech, for if the state or others take from us our inherent right to express freely our views, our opinions, our thoughts and even our prejudices we become a society of oppression where the views of the many are dictated by the few. Woodrow Wilson once said:

I have always been amongst those who believe that the greatest freedom was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking. It cannot be so easily discovered if you allow him to remain silent and look wise. But if you let him speak the secret is out the world knows that he is a fool.

Charles James Fox said:

Opinions only become dangerous to a state only when persecution makes it necessary for the people to communicate their ideas under a bond of secrecy.

Lewis D. Brandeis, in a concurring opinion in Whitney v. California in 1927, said:

Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burned them. It is a function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.

While I champion the right of free men and women to assemble, join and practise whatever religion they will and speak openly and freely, it is important to recognise that those freedoms come with a price, which is responsibility. If our speaking would hurt or harm others, then we must learn to moderate our speaking in support of a cohesive and tolerant society.

I am told by a learned friend that witches can dance around raindrops. But rather than viewing that dance as a marvellous ability which they did not possess, men and women, through fear and ignorance, burned witches at the stake. While we now live in more enlightened times, it seems we still have need to guard against fear, ignorance and intolerance where such attitudes bring hurt to others.

In reflecting on the community debate in Australia today following some overly publicised comments by the member for Oxley, I think we are having two debates. The first, which is about race, creed, culture and religion—in fact, difference—seems to me to be through lack of tolerance based on fear and lack of understanding. The second is, I think, a genuine intellectual debate about, firstly, how best to help those of us who from whatever circumstances cannot or will not without community help lift themselves from positions of deprivation and, secondly, the level, but not the composition of, immigration.

Former American President, Abraham Lincoln, in his famous Gettysburg Address, said:

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.

Our nation of Australia was, of course, conceived at a different time and in different circumstances, but we have never been any less committed to the democratic concept that all men, and indeed all women, are created equal. Lincoln's question was answered in the affirmative.

The member for Oxley has said that a truly multicultural country can never be strong or united. She has also said:

I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians.

I think the member for Oxley is just plain wrong. Our nation is a nation of immigrants, even including, tens of thousands of years ago, our Aboriginal citizens. I am an immigrant, as are many of my colleagues who are representatives of the people in this House of Representatives.

I believe that Australia has become one of the greatest melting pots, if not the greatest, of the world's humanity and that we have done it better than any other nation on earth. We have managed to bring together cultures, creeds and ethnicities from all points of the globe without the racial and religious intolerance and hatred leading to violence and physical acts of desecration which are so prevalent in so many other and older societies in both the developed and the developing world. Any debate which denies that fact is just plain wrong.

I can understand that many in our community feel insecurity because of change to the largest extent forced on us by a rapidly changing world—change we can no more ignore than we could walk to the moon. Too high levels of unemployment help feed that insecurity. But immigration has built this nation and immigration has provided jobs, not taken them away. Fear of difference and fear by individuals of being unable to control events outside themselves always make it easy to blame others for our particular circumstances. But fearing people who look different, speak differently or dress differently is addressed by education and tolerance, not bigotry or racism. I have said before in this place that I grew up in one of the most racist societies on earth, but I grew up to deplore the intolerance and belief in superiority of one race over another. Adolf Hitler fanned underlying fear, greed and hatred to bring on the Second World War and the Holocaust. His views of racial superiority failed the test, and so they should.

On the second of my major issues today, I think the member for Oxley has kicked along a debate we are starting to have, which I have described as an intellectual debate, on how best to help those in our society who today we term `disadvantaged'. It is a reasoned and rational debate which has surrounded modern concepts of the welfare state for a very long time. In recent years it has become all too frequently the habit of those who believe in an ever expanding safety net to denigrate those of differing views as heartless, unthinking, racist or lacking in sympathy and understanding. It is a political correctness argument. In my view it is intellectually sustainable to argue that increasing social welfare can lead to increasing dependence and that dependence breeds upon itself, locking those encompassed by it into a life void of happiness, ambition or fulfilment because of that dependence. The member for Oxley has said:

The majority of Aboriginals do not want handouts because they realise welfare is killing them.

I suspect that is not true. I believe that we have a compelling need to help our Aboriginal brothers and sisters lift themselves through effective education, urgent attention to demonstrably poor health outcomes and dramatically improving their access to an acceptable standard of housing. It is not only appropriate but also incumbent on us to do everything possible to help those in our society who are in need and to give them a chance to help themselves. How we go about this is a legitimate debate.

But to argue that Aboriginals, particularly those in regional and outback Australia, are not the most disadvantaged of our citizens is an absolute nonsense. The member for Oxley has said:

To survive in peace and harmony, united and strong, we must have one people, one nation, one flag.

At first glance, that sounds like the ultimate national motherhood statement, but if it is code that we must all be the same to meet that objective, then the honourable member misses the boat well and truly. We will never be all the same. Trying to put us into boxes defined by race, creed, colour, hairstyle or dress is both impractical and undesirable. It is our differences that make us learn, think, expand and grow—and that, my colleagues, is for the good of us all. Mark Twain said:

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

I thank the House.