AUSTRALIAN CITIZENSHIP

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide) (15:27): I have had the honour of attending about 15 citizenship ceremonies since coming into this role and I would like to share my observations gathered over that year or so. The first is the overwhelming sense of pride evident on the faces of the people who are becoming citizens. This pride reminds me as an Australian born citizen not to take belonging to this country for granted. The strength of our democracy, evident in the three levels of government represented at each ceremony, is to be treasured and to be prized. While being signed up to the electoral roll the minute you become a citizen and then rushed through three elections in just over 12 months might feel a bit of a shock to newly minted Australians, better a surfeit of democracy than none.

The scope of our rights to preserve individual liberties is enviable and, thanks to some very good governments here and federally, the services provided to make our lives safe, healthy and productive is similarly the envy of much of the world. It is easy to know this intellectually but nonetheless grizzle about relatively minor frustrations and irritations. It is a wonderful reminder of how fortunate we are to live in Australia, to see the happiness in the faces of the people who have chosen to come and make their lives here.

Second, the number of individual stories that lie behind each face fascinates me. When I am fortunate enough to speak at these ceremonies, I try to vary what I say out of pity for the councillors who have to sit through many of my citizenship speeches, but each time I welcome the people who are becoming citizens I ask them to keep their stories and add them to this country, not to feel that they have to abandon who they are or instantly forget the journey they took to get here. This is particularly important, I think, for those who have had a hard journey, who have suffered, who have had to leave family members and loved ones behind.

I look at the faces of women with their children coming from war torn parts of our world and I wonder what they have experienced. Their journeys may make hard hearing but they should feel that they can tell us what they went through if they want to and that we have to understand that many people who now live in Australia have survived war, torture, refugee camps and loss and have shown enormous courage and resilience to make their way to become Australian.

Third, the richness of cultures in this country surpasses nearly all others. We are a nation of migrants. Admittedly the journey the first peoples took to get here happened many thousands of years ago but come here they did. In the last 200 years we have seen wave upon wave of migration and each has added immeasurably to the quality of our life in our settlements, to the strength of our economy and to the diversity of our culture. I take great delight in attending the festivals and ceremonies of the many cultures that make up the Port Adelaide electorate, and I know we all enjoy the range of food now available here.

When sitting at a playground on the weekend with my daughter, I was also delighted to hear several languages being spoken. Clearly, while functional English is necessary in our country and having a single common language is very important, having people keep other languages alive—be that Kaurna, Greek or Vietnamese—can only add to the richness of our collective culture. My speech today is simply a few words of gratitude for living in this country, for being in a country where people are welcomed from other places and for the number of interesting, skilled and resilient people who are choosing to make their futures here with us.