Peter Dutton has proposed a federal ban on Nazi symbols as the Coalition takes up Labor’s challenge to condemn Nazi glorification, but deflects calls to back the expulsion of Victorian MP Moira Deeming.
On Wednesday morning the Coalition unsuccessfully attempted to suspend standing orders to move a private member’s bill to criminalise Nazi symbols, as states, including Victoria and New South Wales, have done.
The move follows a challenge from the attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, in question time on Tuesday to condemn neo-Nazis who attended an anti-trans rally in Melbourne and Deeming, an attender who the Victorian Liberal leader, John Pesutto, proposes to expel from the party. Deeming has condemned the attendance of neo-Nazis at the rally, calling them gatecrashers, and has vowed to fight the expulsion attempt, saying she has done nothing wrong.
On Wednesday afternoon the Coalition protested Dreyfus’s allegation that Dutton had “failed to condemn the display of the Nazi salute on the steps of the Victorian parliament”. The opposition asked for the comment to be withdrawn at the end of question time, and half its members walked out when the speaker disagreed.
The federal Coalition is bracing for more fallout from the controversial UK gender activist Kellie-Jay Keen’s Australian visit ahead of a rally in Canberra on Thursday that could expose faultlines in the Coalition on trans rights.
The Liberal senator Alex Antic defended Deeming in the Senate on Monday. On Wednesday the ABC reported and Guardian Australia independently confirmed that Liberal senator Sarah Henderson had lobbied Pesutto and other Victorian colleagues against expelling Deeming.
Guardian Australia understands Country Liberal senator, Jacinta Price, and Liberal senator Claire Chandler have taken up Deeming’s cause internally. Both Price and Chandler have been contacted for comment.
Pesutto spoke with Dutton on Wednesday to update him and explain the rationale for moving to oust Deeming.
The Coalition’s bill, derived from the NSW law, proposes to make it an offence to display Nazi symbols without a “reasonable excuse”. It contains penalties of 12 months in prison or $27,500.
Dutton called on parliament “to stamp out a repugnant practice … which is on the rise and which we must condemn” and to do so as “a matter of urgency”.
“We don’t seek to divide,” he said. “We seek to unify through this action in the parliament today.
“We don’t seek to vilify people for spurious reasons. We don’t seek to cast aspersions on their character that are completely baseless.
“We don’t seek to occupy that ground. In fact, completely the opposite.”
Earlier, the shadow attorney general, Julian Leeser, told the house that the myth of racial superiority had real consequences, including “six million Jews murdered … [along with] people of faith, homosexuals, political prisoners and people with disabilities”.
“It was industrial-scale murder the likes of which the world has never seen. Last Saturday, we saw little men in Melbourne with steroided arms and stunted minds seeking to mimic and impersonate the evil that the greatest generation fought.
“These cowards, many of them with their faces covered by cloths of shame, celebrated nazism.
“There must be no place in Australia for Nazi-style flags, uniforms, salutes and boycotts … Such actions should be and must be a crime.”
Leeser said that Dreyfus had done “something abominable” in question time on Tuesday.
“He attributed antisemitism to someone who is not antisemitic, to our party that is not antisemitic,” he said.
“That action was a mockery of the seriousness of antisemitism.
“By contrast, today, we approach Labor and the crossbench in a spirit of goodwill and good faith.”
A spokesperson for Dreyfus told Guardian Australia “the attorney general’s department has been considering matters related to the prohibition of Nazi symbols for some months”.
Earlier, the leader of the house, Tony Burke, pointed to this work to explain why the government would not support the suspension of standing orders, arguing that it had not had time to scrutinise the bill.
Burke said Labor’s opposition to the procedural motion to bring on the bill “should not be seen to change the unanimity in the need to oppose those symbols”.
He labelled Nazi symbols “horrific”, and referred to the “horror” of the salute as “an act of violence in itself”.
“And of all the symbols of bigotry – this one we have a particular need to unanimously oppose.
“These symbols have been used for what has become the symbol of the worst of humanity. And I was stunned to see them appearing in Melbourne. I was horrified to see them appearing in Melbourne … we all were.”
Burke said he made “no criticism” of Dutton for seeking to bring on the bill.
At the conclusion of question time on Wednesday, the manager of opposition business, Paul Fletcher, asked the speaker to request that Dreyfus withdraw his comments reflecting on Dutton.
Burke responded that such requests are usually reserved for statements made in a member’s absence. He also argued that “tough things are said in this chamber”.
The speaker, Milton Dick, said that Dreyfus’s comments went “largely to what was not said or done”, and did not contain “offensive words or reflections” on Dutton.
Dick said the debate about antisemitism was “sensitive and highly emotive in nature”, prompting a walk-out from about half of Coalition members before he ruled that the comment need not be withdrawn.
On Tuesday, Dutton angrily rejected Labor’s claim he had failed to condemn nazism as a “completely unfounded attack” – but did not weigh in on Deeming’s future.
In that session of question time, Deeming was also defended by interjections from Liberal MP Melissa Price who asked “what did she do wrong” and “what for” in response to Dreyfus’s calls for her to be expelled.
Anthony Albanese made his first public statement against the anti-trans rally on Wednesday, describing it as “really disrespectful of who people are”.
“There is no place in Australia for Nazi salutes, and people basically paying tribute to Nazis, who were responsible for the Holocaust,” he told Nova 100 Radio.
