MARK DREYFUS MP

What Port Arthur taught us in 1996, what the landmark agreement on the National Firearms Register in 2023 has demonstrated, and what the ongoing commitment of gun safety advocates and responsible gun owners show, is that Australians are committed to doing everything we can to keep our communities and police safe from gun violence.

We must continue to look forward to opportunities to strengthen and protect Australia’s human rights framework. As we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and consider our achievements since 1948, we must also look forward to how we can continue to make improvements.

It is ninety years since the Law Council of Australia was formed in 1933 in the wake of the Great Depression to speak on behalf of the entire Australian legal profession.

But the Council is now so much more than a peak body and has evolved to play an important role in policy making and advocating for a fair and just legal system.

There is no place in Australia for symbols that glorify the horrors of the Holocaust. And there is no place in Australia for evil and offensive acts that celebrate Nazi ideology. Today, the Albanese Labor government is strengthening our legislation to ensure that never again will anyone in this country be allowed to celebrate or profit from acts and symbols of the Nazis and terrorist organisations.

Health justice partnerships and integrated service models are playing an increasingly critical role in the delivery of legal assistance. Legal need is often connected to other needs, in particular healthcare, and these models recognise and reflect that. This important work that you do reaffirms my view that legal assistance cannot and should not exist in a vacuum. Health justice partnerships foster unique pathways designed to better facilitate access to justice for vulnerable and disadvantaged people

So much of what I have done – and hope to do as Attorney-General – concerns transparency and accountability.

Not as an end in itself.

A bad government that is transparent is not better than a bad government that is not.

But transparency has a tendency to make governments and institutions be better, if only out of a sense of self-preservation.

Anti-Semitism has been called “the longest hatred” – the Nazis did not invent it. And, as the events of the last week have demonstrated all too tragically, Anti-Semitism did not end when the Nazis were defeated.

Tonight, more than 75 years since Australia supported the creation of the state of Israel, my message to you on behalf of the Prime Minister and the Australian Government – your government – is simple: Australia stands as one with Israel and the people of Israel.

Labor’s commitment to a strong Australian democracy is about a democracy that works for the Australian people, not just for elected officials. Labor knows – in opposition and in government – that Australia’s strong democratic traditions are precious and must be protected.

We all have a responsibility to be aware of the Constitution and its importance. It is we, the Australian people, who are ultimately responsible for maintaining and amending the Constitution to meet the changing and growing needs of our nation. This year, the Australian people will be asked to vote in a referendum to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by enshrining an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice in the Constitution. It’s an historic moment in Australia’s journey to reconciliation. It is not an easy journey – as I have said already, changing the Australian constitution is hard – but I am confident that Australians will embrace this opportunity.