GetUp! demands apology for senator’s Nazi youth slur

The activist group GetUp! and the Australian Greens are demanding Liberal senator Ian Macdonald withdraw comments linking them to the youth league of Nazi Germany.

Queensland Liberal Senator Ian MacDonald made the remark during a fiery Senate debate on the carbon tax legislation in response to GetUp! plans for nationwide celebrations on Tuesday to mark the expected passage of the bill.

Referring to the organisation as  “the Hitler Youth wing of the Greens political movement,’’ Senator MacDonald repeated his statement after the Greens Deputy Leader, Christine Milne, objected on a point of order and demanded  the comment be withdrawn.

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Senate deputy president Stephen Parry refused to rule the comment out of order and the Greens have pledged to refer both Liberal senators to the upper house privileges committee,  saying the ‘‘Coalition’s dirty politics have hit a new low’’.

GetUp! national director Simon Sheikh has written a letter to the chairman of the privileges committee, Western Australian Senator David Johnston, saying the comparison was  made with ‘‘a weight of hatred and ignorance’’.

GetUp! is demanding their response be included in Hansard.

Jewish Liberal backbencher Josh Frydenburg slapped down his colleagues saying ‘‘while robust political debate is part of a vibrant democracy, however, the use of Nazi analogies to make political points is inappropriate and offensive’’.

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Michael Danby, a Labor backbencher and high-profile member of the Jewish community, criticised GetUp!’s  ‘‘parrot-script, mass emails to members of parliament’’ as counter productive.

But but he said it was ‘‘both inappropriate and laughable for Senator McDonald to use these Nazi comparisons with just another group of Australians with whom he and the Conservative Opposition disagree”.

Senator Milne said the slur was ‘‘an extraordinary abuse of the memories of the countless millions slaughtered by the Nazis and an abhorrent offence to Holocaust survivors and their families’’.

The Greens have also called on Opposition leader Tony Abbott to order Senator McDonald his senator withdraw the remark.

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