Liberal members should “practice what they preach” and call out right-wing extremism, Labor backbencher Anne Aly says. In a rare speech by spy chief Mike Burgess, the ASIO boss sounded the alarm on the rise of right-wing extremism in Australia, a move both Ms Aly and panelist Liberal MP Tim Wilson lauded.
Ms Aly said it was now time for Liberal members to follow the example they set with Muslim communities and publicly decry it.
“We had members of the liberal party line up to say to Muslim communities ‘you need to call it Islamic extremism, you need to call it out’ and they did," she said.
“Now it’s time for them to practice what they preached and stand up and call out right wing extremism.”
It follows comments from Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton on Tuesday, who refused to follow in the steps of the ASIO boss and single out extreme right-wing behaviour.
“If the proliferation of information into the hands of right-wing lunatics or left-wing lunatics is leading to a threat in our country, then my responsibility is to make sure our security agencies are dealing with it and they are,” Mr Dutton said.
When asked if he was comfortable with the label, Mr Wilson told Sky News “people call it whatever they want to call it”.
“There are a lot of different terms. People can say it’s right-wing extremism but I’m going to leave that to the experts. But what we see is extremism on national sentiment,” he said.
“What we see is people motivated by politics, motivated by region, and all of them are threats to our social cohesion.”
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