Labor MP Patrick Gorman ‘disgusted’ by post-Bondi protests in WA, backs Albanese’s Royal Commission decision

A senior Federal Labor MP says he has been “disgusted” by some protests but stopped short of urging WA to follow the lead of New South Wales as it considers banning phrases that have been blamed for fuelling anti-Semitism. Patrick Gorman is Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister and defended Anthony Albanese’s decision not to order a Royal Commission into the Bondi terrorist attack on Friday, as more arrests in Perth and Canberra added to security concerns. He said action against anti-Semitism can not wait for a Royal Commission, and dismissed calls to do both. “We need unity and action. I don’t want division and delay,” Mr Gorman said. “That’s the choice we’ve made, others choose to go down a path of looking for points of division or looking for excuses to delay. I don’t think that’s the right course, and I’m very confident in the position the Australian Government has taken.” Mr Gorman called the arrest of a Yangebup man - found with firearms, ammunition and the Hamas and Hezbollah flags, and accused of praising the Bondi shooters - “truly shocking” and thanked WA Police. Asked about a man charged for making a Nazi salute in a Canberra shopping centre and the seperate firebombing of a rabbi’s car in Melbourne, Mr Gorman insisted there is no room for anti-Semitism anywhere in Australia. “Those who are doing this will be found and will be punished in accordance with the law. That is what I expect,” he said. “And anyone who is making excuses for those sort of behaviours needs to have a really good hard look at themselves.” He supported a two-week ban on protests in New South Wales, but said it is up to State Governments to decide whether it’s needed elsewhere. “There have been protests here in Western Australia that I thought were inappropriate, disgusting, completely unhelpful for any form of social cohesion,” Mr Gorman said. “Some of the chants, which I won’t repeat, have disgusted me.” But he didn’t criticise Labor MPs who have attended some public protests against Israel’s bombing of Gaza, where slogans including “from the river to the sea” have been repeated. “I’m not aware of what happened at every single rally. I’ve never attended any of them, obviously,” Mr Gorman said. “But some of the chants that have been . . .made out in front of my electorate office in Inglewood have been completely inappropriate, have disgusted me. And I’m aware of those chants because I was sitting inside and I heard them, and it just broke my heart.” He called a crackdown on hate speech the “national priority” in the wake of the horror inflicted on Bondi. “States will come up with their own approaches,” Mr Gorman said. “When I think about what I’m grateful for here in Western Australia, in recent times, we have had less of the forms of hate than we have seen in Sydney and Melbourne, but we haven’t been free from it. “We’ve seen awful graffiti, we’ve seen awful protests . . . There’s been too much of it, and it has to stop. “This is the national priority right now, and where there are good ideas, I’m all ears.” The Member for Perth said Federal Parliament’s summer break might be cut short to pass hate speech laws and empower the Immigration Minister to deport extremist preachers. “We are drafting laws right now. We remain open to how quickly how we act to make sure we get those laws done as quickly as possible,” he said. Mr Gorman defended the Prime Minister’s response to the deadly Bondi attack, after he was booed at a memorial service in Sydney and accused of allowing anti-Semitism to fester. “When Australia faces the most horrific terrorist attack on Australian soil we have ever seen there is obviously going to be a range of responses,” Mr Gorman said. “I think you’ve seen real unity from the Australian government about what needs to be done. You’ve seen real leadership from the Prime Minister about the work that lies ahead of us, at the same time respecting that there is too much hurt and too much sorrow in Australia right now.”