Walk Together

The Hon. P. CAICA (Colton) (15:53): On Saturday, along with my wife, Annabel, and many thousands of other South Australians, I attended this year's nationwide Walk Together event, from Elder Park to Rundle Park. Walk Together is a public walk of solidarity to send a message to asylum seekers and refugees that they are welcome in our country. It is also to send a message to all Australians that each of us—every one of us—has a role to play in welcoming and supporting those who have come to Australia from across the seas. After all, excepting for our first peoples, we are all the sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters and great-grandsons and great-granddaughters of people who have come to Australia from all parts of the world.

It was fabulous to see so many people in Adelaide committed to welcoming all those who have travelled across the seas to seek a home in Australia. Annabel and I had a terrific day walking alongside members of our emerging communities and the many who are committed to welcoming and supporting these beautiful people wishing only to forge a new life in and to contribute to our great country.

I would like to express my thanks and congratulations to the staff and many volunteers from Welcome to Australia, as well as to all the community members who assisted in coordinating this year's Walk Together event. In particular, I wish to acknowledge Brad Chilcott, Welcome to Australia national director; Kate Leaney, the manager of the SA Welcome Centre; and Megan Lamb, the South Australian director. I also wish to acknowledge again the many volunteers who help out Welcome to Australia in supporting our refugees and asylum seekers.

For those members who do not know, the Welcome Centre is located in a beautiful old church on Hawker Street and is interestingly and well called the Activate SA building. Members here may wish to visit this outstanding centre. There are gatherings every second Thursday, and all you need to do is bring along a plate of food because there is a dinner for those people who attend. You learn more about the role the centre plays, and you can even volunteer in providing some support to those who visit the centre.

Support can come in many ways; it might just be conversational English. You will learn about the trials and tribulations and the background and stories of some of these refugees and asylum seekers. You can assist, if you like, in writing letters on their behalf in their own words, given the difficulties they might have in writing in English. There are a lot of roles can be played by people who wish to support these very good people who are in the category, at this stage, of refugees or asylum seekers. You can help out in many ways.

This morning, we also paid a tribute to Gough Whitlam during the condolence motion. I know we were limited to an hour and many people did not get the opportunity to speak during that hour this morning. I just want to highlight one of the many things that Gough Whitlam, that great Australian prime minister, was responsible for—and that was enacting the Racial Discrimination Act in 1975, making it illegal to discriminate in Australia based on ethnicity or country of origin.

Wherever Gough might be, looking at Australia today, he would say, 'Australia is a different place from when I became prime minister.' It is a better place with respect to cultural tolerance and the very many different people from different national backgrounds who make up Australia today, but he would also be looking down and saying that there is still lots more we can do. Each and every one of us can assist in not only making people who come from across the seas welcome to Australia but in supporting them making that transition from the country they have come from to the country they wish to call home.

Gough Whitlam left great legacies for the people of Australia—legacies that will exist for many years. The Racial Discrimination Act was just one of them, but there is more that we can do to make sure that we, each and collectively, turn Australia into a better place than it is today. Already today, it is the best place in the world to live, but we can do a lot more with respect to our place in the world by making sure that we continue not only to tolerate but to support those people from different cultural backgrounds.