Sydney: Martin Place Siege

Mr HAWKE (Mitchell) (19:41): I rise to echo the remarks of other members of this House in welcoming this motion we have before us today. If there is a beating heart of the city of Sydney, it is hard to think of anywhere that has more of a sense of place than Martin Place. It is the centre of our commercial district—a place where people gather to meet with friends, to reminisce with each other and to visit together at daily lunches and meals. That is exactly why people in Sydney have been so affected by the events we saw on 15 and 16 December 2014 during the 16½-hour stand-off.

People in Sydney understand that any single person in the city of Sydney, at any given time, could have been in that cafe at that moment and subject to those events. We saw the horrors of a terror attack here on our own soil for the first time—and also the bravery of all of the victims of this awful tragedy, including Katrina Dawson and Tori Johnson, who are no longer with us. I particularly want to say, on behalf of my electorate, that Katrina Dawson and her family were well known to the Hills community and to my community in the Dural area. She was a gifted barrister and a mother of three—Chloe, Oliver, and Sasha. Her loving husband, Paul, her parents, Sandy and Jane, and her brothers, Sandy and Angus, have lost a dear member of their family. It is such a great tragedy for my community and for the city of Sydney that this occurred in this place and in this way.

Perhaps the most affecting moment we have seen in this House for some time was seeing all the hostages—minus, of course, Katrina and Tori—and their families here in the gallery this week. You could read the emotion on their faces—the tears and the horror and the underlying strength within them—while they were listening to the Prime Minister. Every member of this House was affected by seeing them here in person and every member of this House has the utmost respect for all the people that were affected by this tragedy and their families.

These events have brought out the best in our country. They are a reminder that we share our values of liberty, individual rights and freedom and our fundamental respect for each other as human beings. They have drawn out the most significant and positive outpouring of grief that we have seen here in our nation for some time.

The Martin Place tributes brought everyone together from Sydney, from all walks of life and all corners of our city, to pay tribute to the lives lost, to the bravery and to the victims and their families. It was the most welcome outpouring that we could expect from our society. It brought out the best in all of us. Regardless of how you look at it, we ought to be proud of the way our society has responded to something so damaging and difficult for us to deal with. The strength of the police and all those who handled this tragedy is to be admired and congratulated. Plenty of people had put their lives on the line to do their jobs, to ensure our freedom and liberty was secure. I pay tribute to the police and the operation they ran and to all of our security services that keep us so safe.

The real story of this tragedy is that we have some significant failings in our system. I thank the Prime Minister for immediately announcing that there will be a serious and substantive review of all facets of the tragedy and implications of it. It is important at these junctures that we examine the hard things honestly, that we ask what failings there are in our system that could allow for someone who had such malice in his soul not just to commit this particular atrocity but to have had a lifetime of ill treatment towards others. If you examine the life of this evil figure, there is a litany of wreckage of human lives and a litany of wreckage of our society.

There has to be a point where we can say: enough is enough. We have to stop such people. We have to identify such people. We have to prevent such people. This person's ex-wife was stabbed to death and burnt—set alight in a stairwell. Other victims of his infamy have come forward. We need to ask ourselves: how did this happen and how can we ensure that similar people, and I have no doubt there are others, can be prevented from doing such things in the future?

I welcome the review and report that will come. We must, together as a House, together as a parliament and together as a nation have no boundaries for dealing with these sorts of issues. We are all together on this. We all want to prevent this violation of human rights, we all want to protect our freedoms and liberties and, most of all, we all want to prevent a repeat of such an awful tragedy—for the people involved and the families who have now suffered so much from the actions of someone so terrible.

I end by praising our leaders of all sides of politics—whether that be the Prime Minister and the opposition leader here in this place, the Premier, who was magnificent in the hour called upon him, the police commissioners or those of us who were asked something, all of us have responded from the top of our society all the way down to the ordinary street level. Every Australian has responded in a way that we can be proud of.

To the families and loved ones, our thoughts and prayers are with you during the unimaginable grief that you would be experiencing. We pray for all of those to recover who are still injured. I am so proud of the unity of all Australians. I commend this motion to the House.