PATRICIA KARVELAS, HOST: I'm joined by Matt Thistlethwaite, who is the Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs and also the member for Kingsford Smith which is, of course, very much affected by this tragedy as well. Welcome to the program.
MATT THISTLETHWAITE, ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND TRADE: Thanks, Patricia.
KARVELAS: What's your assessment of the tone of today? Was the tone right? Did it get the message right? And did it strip politics out of this?
ASSISTANT MINISTER: I think it did. Obviously, it was a very emotional day in the Parliament, with Members still paying tribute to the victims and their families and remembering them. From my electorate, we had five people, unfortunately, that were killed that I paid tribute to. I've met with their families and obviously the emotion is still very, very raw. But it was also an uplifting occasion, a time for Australians to unite. And I think the Prime Minister's message around us coming together to support Jewish community, to take responsibility for what occurred, but also to provide some hope in the legislative reforms that we're making and ensuring that this never happens again on Australian soil.
KARVELAS: What did you make of Sussan Ley suggesting in her speech that the Prime Minister should apologise for taking too long to announce that Royal Commission into this terror event and antisemitism?
ASSISTANT MINISTER: Well, obviously, in the wake of Bondi, I praised the Prime Minister in the caucus this morning, because the very next day he was on the ground at Bondi and he stayed there for the full week. He met with families and victims, he met with Jewish leaders, he met with the first responders to thank them. And I think he's done a great job and shown great leadership. Obviously, it takes time to put together a Royal Commission and to respond. And the opposition was calling for a Royal Commission. They were calling for us to respond to Jillian Segal's recommendations. We've done all of that. And in responding to Jillian Segal, we proposed some legislation that adopted one of her recommendations around a vilification offence. And then the Opposition have walked away from that. So, at one point they were saying, we're not going fast enough. And then when we did introduce the legislation and show it to them, they said, we've gone too fast. So, I think there's been a bit of mixed messaging from the Opposition regarding this. We want to try and work with them now on these hate speech reforms.
KARVELAS: Was it wrong to put all the bill in one omnibus bill? It's been critiqued as being a wedge and was it too nakedly political to do it that way?
ASSISTANT MINISTER: No, it wasn't, because the community was calling for gun law reform. We know that. How someone can have six guns when they're not a farmer and a sporting shooter is beyond me. So, that does need to be dealt with and we're dealing with that. They also realised that antisemitism had been on the rise and we needed to combat that and we needed to have reforms to the migration system. So, they were all things that the Jewish community called for, the Opposition community called for, and generally the Australian public called for. We put that all in the legislation because we wanted to get it done in this week of the Parliament and respond to those requests from the community. It's unfortunate that we've had to split them. But we'll do what we can to get that reform through.
KARVELAS: You were one of the first speakers in the chamber and of course, you know, you represent, as you say, five victim families. And you began speaking by highlighting the memory of Matilda. Just talk to me about why you wanted to focus on Matilda.
ASSISTANT MINISTER: I think Matilda represents the innocence and the tragedy of that event. As I mentioned, Matilda and her sister Summer were students at the La Perouse Public School. They're of Ukrainian descent. The La Perouse Public School has a very high proportion, well over 50%, of the students are from the La Perouse Aboriginal community. But they took that Ukrainian family into their heart and they gave Matilda the Dharawal name, Wuri Wuri, which in that language means sunshine. And that's what she was. She was just a ray of sunshine. When you saw her at presentation days and events, she was smiley, bubbly. And that photo of her captured on Bondi Beach I thought really encompassed the tragedy of it all. She was also part of the community involved in Souths Cares, the Rabbitohs gave me a little jersey with her name on it to present to the family at the funeral. And that was really, really emotionally charged for me and for that family. And I thought that that was something that I had to do to start that speech, to really highlight how important it is and what a tragedy is as well.
KARVELAS: Yeah, it's unspeakably sad. Tony Burke spoke in the chamber as well. He wished the Parliament was going harder on hate crimes, he says. But yet the Prime Minister says if they don't get past, these watered-down laws tomorrow, that's it. Why is it, if they're important, why would you give up?
ASSISTANT MINISTER: Well, obviously we want to do what we can to support the Jewish community. And we see the recommendations of the Segal report as the blueprint for that. Now, we'll take our time and try and work with the opposition. But there comes a point in time where you can be flogging, you know, a dead horse and you can't get anywhere. So, you need to try and get some sort of --
KARVELAS: Sure, but you've only given that, with respect, two days of the Parliament. How can the Prime Minister say the laws will be abandoned after just that timeframe?
ASSISTANT MINISTER: Well, this is our second go at it. It's not the first go. We tried last week on a set of laws that we thought were quite reasonable and encompass those recommendations. Obviously, we'll continue to try and negotiate with them on the hate speech element and the migration changes. The migration changes shouldn't be controversial. I think many Australians have been calling for that for some time. And aggravated offences for hate speech crimes in Australia should not be controversial either. So, hopefully that will pass. I think the other important thing to highlight is that the Royal Commission is ongoing and they'll obviously, there'll be an interim report, the Richardson Report, later this year, but final recommendations at the end of the year. And obviously there's further opportunity for legislative reform on the back of that.
KARVELAS: Many thanks for joining us this afternoon.
ASSISTANT MINISTER: Thank you, Patricia.