Speech to Iranian Community – Sydney Town Hall

I am here today as a member of the Australian Parliament. As a member representing the fourth largest Persian community in Australia and someone who has consistently throughout my parliamentary career stood with the Iranian people.

Persians are a wonderful people with an ancient civilisation and a modern liberal outlook

There are around 86,000 Iranians in Australia.

I see them across my community involved in every aspect of my community – from the P and Cs to the sports clubs to the doctors and nurses at Hornsby Hospital, there are engineers, IT professionals, in the arts, in small business. They make wonderful Australians.

But while I am delighted that they are making a contribution our county I know many are here because for the best part of half a century a regime has been in power which has made their lives in Iran a living hell.

When I speak with Persians in my electorate, and across the country, one message comes through repeatedly. They are carrying the pain of watching loved ones in Iran live under a despotic regime.

A criminal regime that abuses women and minorities.

A regime noted for its abuse of human rights at home and its export of terror abroad, including to our own country, Australia, with firebombing attacks on a Synagogue in Melbourne and a delicatessen in Sydney.

A criminal regime whose long arm follows people abroad and even intimidates them in this country.

I have been calling out Iran for the decade I have been in Parliament. For its abuse of the human rights of the Baha’i, for its abuse of women, for its human rights violations and its terrorist proxies.

As a member of the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, I was involved in the listing of Iran’s proxy Hizbollah and Hamas.

In February 2023, following the murder of Masa Amini, I called for the listing of the IRGC as a terrorist organisation. And as Shadow Attorney General, I offered the Liberal Party’s support for any measures to help list the IRGC.

When I hosted Senator Clare Chandler for a forum with the Persian community in my constituency in 2023, people told me they were afraid to come because of the long arm of the embassy and the IRGC in our own country.

In October 2023, I called for diplomatic relations against Iran to be suspended, even as Labour luminaries like Bob Carr were having happy snaps with the ambassador.

Our Governments middle east policy is a shambles. Australia has spent too much of the last four years lecturing Israel rather than standing up to Iran when they were warned by the Persian community and the Jewish community of the danger Iran posed to our country.

Finally, after they were dragged kicking and screaming, they booted the ambassador and passed legislation to proscribe the IRGC.

But it took at least two regime-coordinated attacks on Jewish Australians on our very own soil, where a synagogue was firebombed and a restaurant was burnt. Acts of war. For this to happen.

After the attacks on Lewis Continental Kitchen and the Adas Israel Synagogue, we should be leading global efforts to bring the Iranian regime to Justice.

Protests in Iran

What do we see in Iran today.

We see a regime which has shut down the internet.

Murdered more than30,000 people.

I know that front of mind for all of us are the recent protests that have spread across hundreds of cities and towns throughout Iran. Millions of ordinary people have found the courage to stand up and demand change.

Thousands paid with their lives. Many more have been injured, arrested, tortured, or left carrying trauma that will last for a lifetime.

Today I want to talk about just a few of these people.

Sholeh Sotoudeh, a mother of two young children from Langarud who was pregnant with her third child when she and her unborn baby were killed on January 10 when forces opened fire on a crowd she was in.

Ziba Dastjerdi, 33, who was shot and killed in front of her 8-year-old daughter at a protest in Nishapur.

40-year-old Soran Feyzizadeh, who died because of torture he was subjected to while being held following his arrest on January 7. Reports say that “his body was barely recognisable due to the extent of injuries caused by repeated blows.”

15-year-old Taha Safari is believed to be one of the youngest victims of the protests. He was detained by authorities, with his body handed to his family 3 days later.

28-year-old Negin Ghadimi was shot, with live ammunition cleaving her body from her stomach. Unable to get to the hospital, she died in the hands of her father.

Two people, one a child, were sexually assaulted while being arrested. An individual close to the child’s family described how forces touched their bodies with batons. That they “beat and applied pressure to the anal area with a baton through their clothing.”

We know that this is far from the only case of sexual violence in the past few months.

An Iranian-born journalist said in recent days, “No women’s bodies are turning up … and that’s because, according to eyewitness accounts, they are being raped, their uteruses removed, their scalps ripped off along with their hair and their bodies covered in cigarette burns.

These accounts would make any decent person, of any background, sick to their stomachs.

Australia in its sights

And we know Iran has Australia in its sights.

Radical Islamic extremism has no place in Australia.

When I spoke in Parliament recently about radical Islamic extremism, and its role in the massacre of Jews at Bondi, I spoke specifically about Iranian Australians in my electorate who have for years stood against the Mullahs of Iran and all extremism.

Your strength and your courage are to be honoured, and as a member of the Australian Parliament, I stand with you.

Tomorrow om your behalf I am going to rise in the Parliament and condemn the Iranian regime and its abuse of human rights at home and its export of terror abroad.

I want people right across Australia to know that the Persian people will not be ignored.

The Iran I want

I’m here to honour Masa Amini. I’m here to honour Reza Palavhi

I’m here to honour all those who speak up and who want Iran to live out its destiny as a free democratic nation, not a pariah state under a brutal criminal dictatorship.

I want an Iran where the Iranian people freely choose their future, far from the jackboot of a police state.

I want an Iran where women have the same rights and freedoms that they enjoy in this country.

A country where women and girls can live without fear. Where they can dress as they choose, pursue an education, build careers and shape their own futures.

A country where children can go to school to learn and grow, not to be subjected to political or religious extremism and indoctrination, and where families can live their daily lives in peace.

To everyone here today, thank you for standing up for what is right. For standing with friends, family, loved ones, and strangers in Iran who live with the hope to some day be free as we are.

And to those who are protesting in Iran, I say as I have said before: You may live under the sword of fear, but you are counted among the champions of liberty.

We see you.

We hear you.

We stand with you, and we will not be silent.