Video – Deborah O'Neill

(12:15): I rise today to speak in strong support of the motion relating to the Hamas attack on Israel that was moved by Minister Wong. I had intended to give this speech last night when the motion was being formally debated, but I was absent from parliament and privileged instead to be in Sydney, as a representative of the government, welcoming those Australians home who had been in Israel at the time of the Hamas attack. I want to thank Senator Polley for giving me the opportunity to make this timely contribution today.

Let me tell you, my fellow Senators, that the sights of families being reunited after one of the most horrifying periods imaginable will remain imprinted on my consciousness forever. I want to commend Premier Minns and the public servants who made those 222 returning Australians so welcome. I also want to commend the efforts of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, who have already enabled so many Australians to return home. I acknowledge their ongoing efforts, in particular to repatriate the Australians who remain trapped in Gaza and who are at such immediate risk.

Distance is not an adequate measure of the closeness of this conflict to our nation. Many Australians have been directly affected because they were, or continue to be, within the region directly experiencing the fear and violence which define this conflict, because they are friends and family of those overseas who have tragically lost their lives, been taken hostage or remain in the region living in fear. And, having spoken to some who are the relatives of hostages, I want to convey some words which were spoken to me in the last 24 hours: ‘We grew up educated for peace. We are still donating to our friends in Gaza. We have nothing against Palestine, but we have a great deal against Hamas.’

I speak to Australians because we’re frightened of the grotesque displays of anti-Semitism that we’ve witnessed here in Australia and the Islamophobia and violence against Palestinians we’ve witnessed in other Western nations. I speak simply because we are human, and the witnessing of another human’s suffering, their pain and their loss, touches our hearts.

I strongly commend Minister Wong; the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister for Defence; and the Prime Minister for their unwavering leadership throughout the past days. Our leaders’ swift condemnation of Hamas’s horrific attacks on Israel, their unwavering support of the Israeli state and its right to defend itself, and the empathy and humanity they have demonstrated in charting our nation’s course through this time have made me deeply proud to be a member of this government. And I note the multipartisan joint statement on Israel-Hamas now carried in both the Senate and the House.

In a conflict which continues to be played by gross misinformation and the intentional objective of stoking confusion, hatred and false divisions, there are few things which can be stated with absolute certainty: Israel has a right to exist and a right to defend itself. All people deserve to live safe from fear and violence. The loss of every innocent life is a tragedy.

Hamas is a terrorist organisation, responsible for horrific, illegal and unjust violence against Israeli civilians. It’s an oppressor of the Palestinian people. Hamas’s attack on Israel involved the brutal murder of over a thousand Israelis—men, women and children—who were taken by surprise and had their lives viciously and ruthlessly cut short. I am personally sickened by attempts to justify that violence and the intentional act of seeking out and slaughtering civilians. In our attempts to navigate this conflict, some people have sought to abstract the violence that real people are experiencing. There are people who seek to politicise this issue to a point beyond recognition, to a point where the death, fear and psychological pain experienced by real people are forgotten.

Abstracted discussions of terror, war and politics do not account for the horror of these experiences on an individual level and the way that they are experienced by real human beings—the shock and fear of hearing gunshots or bombs dropping just outside the door; the thoughts in a person’s mind as they run through a field, watching their friends fall around them; the pain a person feels watching their loved ones die violently in front of their very eyes, knowing only that they cannot stop it and that they may very well be next. The experience of individuals, their fear, the way they grieve, the real tears which have been shed and the blood which has been spilled—these are not political concepts. They are tangible realities. It’s easier for us to ignore them and to speak in abstraction and obfuscation. That is the exact reason we must acknowledge the realities—because it is difficult.

This moment also demands acknowledgement that Hamas is distinct from the Palestinian people. More than half the population of Gaza are people under the age of 18. They are children. I support with all my being the efforts currently underway to establish humanitarian access and aid to those who are in need, and I pray for the protection of all innocent Palestinian and Israeli lives. I certainly pray for the protection of those who are now hostages under the watch of Hamas. I condemn it, and I call for the release of the hostages, along with every other decent person walking the planet. Palestinians deserve access to food, water, medication and safety. I echo Minister Wong’s determined and consistent call for the establishment of humanitarian access and safe passage for civilians. We must continue despite what has gone on already and what will come in the days ahead. We must continue to emphasise the protection of civilian lives and the observance of humanitarian law.

The viewing of people in categories is diminishing to all. In times such as this, the challenge is always to remind oneself of the uniqueness of each soul and to elevate our fundamental understanding of suffering and loss. In this darkness, we are in search of the light in our hearts. If we fail to recognise the experience of individual people and no longer emphasise the base humanity inherent in their experiences, we risk the loss of our own humanity. Viktor Frankl, a Jewish Austrian psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz, categorically documented his experience through the lens of psychiatry. He explained clinically how such immeasurable suffering and despair are reflected in the daily mind of a prisoner. Frankl tells of a mechanised evil that transported him to Auschwitz from Vienna. Upon leaving the cattle car, he was separated from the vast majority—some 90 per cent—of those he was with, who were immediately murdered. Viktor was forced into a room with others. They were given a strict two minutes to strip down to only their shoes and belts. In their nakedness they were lined up, whipped by SS guards and marched into a shower, their only relief coming from noticing real water coming out of the faucet.

The Holocaust demonstrated to the world how evil humanity can be given the right conditions. Day after day mass murders were executed with an efficiency and absence of unease made possible only by the dehumanisation of a whole category of human beings. On reflecting on his survival of one of the worst atrocities humanity has ever inflicted on itself, Viktor Frankl said:

Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.

Viktor was right. At best, humanity is capable of love, compassion and charity; at worst, humanity is cruel, sadistic and brutal. When we force people into faceless categories, when we cease to recognise our common humanity, we risk the worst that we are capable of. When we cannot feel empathy for any Palestinian or Israeli mother putting her child to bed at night, surrounded by explosions, unsure of whether they will make it through the night, we have lost our humanity.

It is reasonably well-known that I have a set of rosary beads and a copy of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. The Holocaust was born of the greatest horrors known to man. Let us not forget the lessons.

Senator O’NEILL (New South Wales) (16:18): I certainly endorse the comments of my fellow Labor senator here, Senator Carol Brown, and I’m very happy to put on the record the praise with which she is spoken of in the electorates I’ve visited in New South Wales for her care for the disability sector and the important work she is doing in that region.

I rise to speak to the Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme report on the provision of services under the NDIS for people with psychosocial disabilities related to mental health conditions, and I do that with a particular sense of responsibility, because I’m very pleased to have the role of assisting the member for Franklin, Julie Collins, in her role as the shadow minister for mental health and assisting her particularly with young people. By 2019-20 a total of 64,000 people with psychosocial disabilities related to a mental health condition will become NDIS participants. That is 13.9 per cent of the total expected participants in the NDIS. However, people with mental illness will continue to require services even if they’re not participants in the NDIS, and all governments need to provide that continuity of support for people with psychological disabilities who are not eligible for the NDIS.

Just yesterday, I met with Tony Stevenson, National CEO of the Mental Illness Fellowship of Australia, MIFA, who visited me on one of his rounds of advocacy for this very important national issue. MIFA is a peak body consisting of longstanding membership-based organisations. It’s a fantastic organisation delivering specialist place-based community building programs, with a strong focus on recovery and on lived experience. Currently MIFA has over 100 front doors across Australia, with over 50 per cent of its staff having lived experience as a consumer or a carer, such as a parent or a child. In the last parliament I recall being at hearings in Sydney with Senator Moore, who is in the chamber this afternoon, taking evidence on mental illness. I particularly recall the power of the testimony that we received from people who had lived experience themselves or were in families with people whose lived experience of mental ill-health provided incredible challenges for the whole family to confront and manage and overcome. Yesterday, Mr Stevenson stressed to me the importance of each and every one of us remembering that not everyone with a psychosocial disability will be a participant in the NDIS. MIFA collaborates and has connections with service providers and organisations in every single state in Australia, including organisations such as Suicide Prevention Australia, the national peak body for the suicide prevention sector.

Earlier today I moved a motion in the Senate noting that this Sunday coming, 10 September, is World Suicide Prevention Day. I’d like to make a few comments with regard to this. World Suicide Prevention Day aims to increase awareness about the problem of suicide and the many ways each of us can work together to reduce suicide. This year, the theme for Suicide Prevention Day is ‘Take a minute, change a life’. And that’s all it could take—one minute of talking to someone to actually change the trajectory of a decision that they might make with a very long term consequence to a temporary solution to a problem. This theme complements the work undertaken by R U OK? Day, which encourages all of us to take the time to notice what’s going on with our families, our friends, our colleagues and ourselves. Next Thursday, 14 September, we will be highlighting R U OK? Day. It is a day that reminds all of us that, if we’re worried about someone, we have to take time to start meaningful conversations and to take time out to notice one another and to respond to the people who live around us, in whatever context we might find ourselves. There are four simple steps to this: to ask, to listen, to encourage action and then to check in with the person and see how things are going.

It’s very important for all of us to remember that suicide prevention is something that’s the responsibility of each one of us. At this time in Australia’s history, suicide is, very sadly, the leading cause of death for men and women between the ages of 15 and 24, and that is simply not okay. In 2015, more than 3,000 Australian men and women lost their life to suicide. This is an average of 8.3 deaths by suicide every single day. When we say these numbers—and there are many numbers recorded on the Hansard in this place—the reality of losing eight lives to suicide across this country has a powerful and significantly awful effect on the whole community. Those 8.3 statistical numbers are real people having an impact on their community. Sadly, the figures that I’m citing to you here today represent the highest suicide rate in 15 years. One death by suicide is too many. An estimated 65,000 Australian men and women also attempt suicide. That is not okay.

These heartbreaking statistics are a stark reminder of the need for a coordinated effort across government and community to reduce suicide in Australia. The seriousness of Australia’s mental health and suicide burden reminds all of us that we have to do more to reduce the thousands of Australian lives that are lost each year.

Sadly, suicide continues to disproportionately impact Indigenous communities. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are twice as likely to die by suicide than non-Indigenous people. Young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged between 15 and 17 had a suicide rate more than five times that of their non-Indigenous peers. That is not okay.

We must work together—all of us—to reduce the rates and the impact of mental ill-health and suicide in Australia. Research tells us that suicide is mostly preventable, and we can all play a part in that. At this point in time I’d like to record an incident that shocked me in my experience as a teacher. It was at a year 12 farewell day. Having finished his schooling, a young man I had taught came up to me, and his farewell was a little unusual. He said, ‘I want to thank you for taking the roll.’ He did it in that grumbly way that teenage boys can do. I asked him to repeat it. He said, ‘Thank you for taking the roll, Miss.’ I was a little puzzled by what he said. I said to him, ‘Did you just thank me for taking the roll?’ He said, ‘Yes, Miss, because I was thinking about suicide and the only thing that stopped me was knowing that you would miss me when you took the roll.’ Now, you don’t realise the power of a single conversation with a person when it comes to preventing suicide. And, certainly, I didn’t have any sense of what taking the roll was doing. In the essence it proved one thing to me: what we have to do is see people. We busily move around in our lives but we have the opportunity to stop and to notice those who come into our field of view, and people for whom we have some responsibility—and that is everyone. That’s everyone we interact with.

So, from the smallest things like that, everyone can do more to reduce the loss of thousands of Australians lives every year. Everyone can be a part of creating a suicide-safe Australia. That’s why Labor has offered to work with the Turnbull government in bipartisanship to address this significant national challenge. A lot of great work has already been done. But we can all do more and we can and must do better. As I have already said, one death by suicide is too many. We are always continuously inspired by the efforts of dedicated individuals and organisations such as Suicide Prevention Australia and the Mental Illness Fellowship of Australia, who are working to address suicide prevention and to tackle the stigma around mental ill-health. It is up to all of us to establish systems of care as well as actions of care and conversations of care with people we interact with daily. We can do more to take notice. We can do more to ask the question, to check in with people after we’ve encouraged them to seek help and to make sure that we take responsibility for our fellow Australians to keep them well and help them to get over the crises that are a part of living. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.