Mr LEO McLEAY (3:46 PM) —The motion that the House is debating this afternoon is an important motion because it says something about our country as well as the country we are talking about, Turkey. The motion essentially asks us to condemn the persecution of all religious minorities around the world and particularly the effects that the Turkish government are causing to Christian minorities in Turkey. Many people have come to this country from Turkey and from countries around it and are able, in this country, to share with people from all over the world their religious and political freedoms. In Turkey, that is not so.

The Turkish government is, at this stage, actively working against Christians in a financial way and earlier this century did it in a most inhumane and murderous way in that two million people were marched off and killed and whole communities were uprooted. Communities that had been living around the Bosphorus and the Black Sea for hundreds and hundreds of years were just obliterated. A whole culture was obliterated, and this was done by the Turkish government.

Turkey, as my colleague the member for the Northern Territory (Mr Dondas) said, has forgotten nothing and learnt nothing. In 1974, as he said, they invaded the island of Cyprus and started to do the same thing—moved people out, killed people and desecrated churches. There are still icons being sold on the international market which have been plundered from churches in northern Cyprus. Churches in northern Cyprus have been turned into barracks and have been turned into living quarters.

What the Turkish government did in Turkey they are now doing in northern Cyprus, and this is a country that expects to become part of the European Union shortly. Turkey is a member of NATO. Turkey is a country that puts its public face forward as a Western liberal democracy but beneath that public face there is a murderous anti-social, anti-Christian attitude. One does not expect that Turkey should become pro-Christian; one just expects that Christians in Turkey should have the same rights as people of the Islamic faith have in other Western countries.

What we are asking for is that people have the same rights—that Christians in Turkey should have the same rights that Turkish people have here in Australia. That is not asking much. I think, as I am sure my colleagues do, that this parliament should have a point of view on that, that the Australian people, through their representatives here, should say that. While it is not normal that we have a vote on matters of private members business, I think today on this matter we should. So that we can do that, I move:

That the question be now put.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Nehl) —There being more than one voice calling for a division, under standing order 193 the division is deferred until the conclusion of the grievance debate.