Anne Aly, the first Muslim woman elected to Federal
Parliament, says she has found some common ground with controversial Queensland
Senator Pauline Hanson. The Labor MP for Cowan said her office extended the
invitation to Senator Hanson, who accepted almost immediately.
Ms Aly and the One Nation Party leader had lunch in
Canberra on Thursday afternoon. Ms Aly told 720 ABC Perth that while she had
known they would not agree on everything, they did share common views. “I
understand the things that she’s been saying, whatever, and if we can do away
with all of that, and let’s talk about concerns that we both have around
terrorism and around violent extremism and radicalisation and, you know, let’s
work from that basis as opposed to a basis of being divided on opinions about
it,” she said.
The pair also discussed what it was like for a
first-time MPs, with Senator Hanson starting her first term in the Senate. Ms
Aly said she did not raise Senator Hanson’s speech last month, in which she said
Australia was in danger of “being swamped by Muslims, who bear a culture
and ideology that is incompatible with our own”. “I deliberately didn’t raise those
comments because when I started the conversation with her around those things,
I said, ‘You know, I wanted to talk to you because I know we’re not going to
agree on things and I will call you up if I don’t agree on things, I will pull
it up and I will speak’,” she said.
“And she said, ‘I’ll do the same for you’ and I
said, ‘Yeah, and I expect that’. “I do believe that there are issues of
concern that we may have in common, we just approach them differently.
“She would say something that I don’t agree with
and I’d say, ‘Look, I understand where that’s coming from but I don’t agree
with it, and here’s why I don’t agree with it, and here’s some of the research
that I’ve done and this is my experience’.”
Ms Aly said the conversation was cut short by a
parliamentary call for a division, so she and Senator Hanson made plans to have
further discussions, specifically about section 18C of the Racial
Discrimination Act. The Labor MP said she also shared a joke with the One
Nation leader about how it was possible to put on weight in Canberra, despite
spending so much time running to the parliamentary chamber whenever the bells
rang calling for a division.
