Liberal Assistant Defence Minister Alex Hawke has been accused of stoking racist sentiment after claiming Labor MP Anne Aly thought that her “Diversity was better than others.”
These statements were made after Aly disputed Hawke’s claims that many of the politicians in the room had heritage from outside Australia as an argument for the success of Australia's multiculturalism.
Hawke claims his goal was to show that Labor was misrepresenting the facts of multiculturalism in Australia and claims of racism and antisemitism stem from a fixation on identity politics.
Hawke’s claims equate the experience of all immigrant groups, misrepresenting the difference between the treatment of white and non white immigrants by both the Australian government and public.