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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-06-23 Daily Xml
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World Refugee Week

Mr SZAKACS (Cheltenham) (12:40): I move:

That this house—

(a) notes that World Refugee Week 2021 runs from 20 June to 26 June;

(b) notes communities, schools, businesses, faith groups and people from all walks of life who are taking big and small steps in solidarity with refugees;

(c) notes that migrants and refugees have made a social and economic contribution throughout our nation's history;

(d) notes that Australia is, and always will remain, a society drawn from a rich variety of cultural, ethnic, linguistic and religious backgrounds, building on the over 40,000-year-old history and culture of all our First Nations peoples;

(e) notes that according to the UNHCR's Global Trends Report, there were 26 million refugees and people seeking asylum worldwide at the end of 2019, amongst the greatest humanitarian need since the end of World War II;

(f) notes the federal government's reduction in yearly humanitarian intake to 13,750, while continuing to spend $1.19 billion per year on offshore detention and processing of asylum seekers;

(g) notes assistance under the Status Resolution Support Service (SRSS) program administered by Centrelink has been cut from $139.8 million in 2017-18 to just $19.6 million in 2020-21; and

(h) commits to understanding the many challenges refugees and asylum seekers have experienced coming to Australia, both historically and currently.

I am proud to stand here in this chamber today and every day to speak about refugees in this country. I have done it before, and I proudly do so on this occasion of World Refugee Week. Since 1947, nearly one million refugees have found sanctuary in Australia but still, sadly, 30 million people worldwide—and nearly half of those people being children—continue to seek asylum.

This week is particularly important to me. My father, a Hungarian refugee, arrived in Australia in 1957 from Hungary, like so many did in the 1950s. I would not be here, I would not exist, were it not for the care and compassion that was extended to my father when he arrived in Australia. Others have come as migrants, with every single one of those people seeking a better life for their families—a better, safer and more prosperous future for them.

The theme of National Refugee Week in 2021 is 'Unity: the way forward'. It is a reminder to us all that we are not only to survive here but we need to work together to ensure that we create fair opportunities for every single one of us. There has been no greater reminder of this than during the past 18 months, when as a state, a country and a globe, we have been tackling the coronavirus pandemic. We have done so together and we have done so for each other.

Refugee Week is one of those occasions when we can remind ourselves of what we can achieve when we work together. In 2021, the aim of Refugee Week is not only to shine a light on the issues that refugees face but to celebrate all that we as a nation, as a country and as a state have achieved and how we have grown as a result of their arrival and contribution to our state, country and this wonderful nation of ours.

If it were not for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, we are all migrants in this country. Our freedom has come at a cost to them, and we simply cannot move forward as a nation unless we acknowledge this and work with our First Nations people to find true reconciliation because the refuge that I speak of, the sanctuary that I speak of—that sanctuary that my father sought and found—has at times come at great cost to our First Nations people. This cost and suffering continues to this day, and the traumatic effects of colonisation, disadvantage and suppression continue.

Underpinning this great nation of ours is also a history that we must reflect on. One of the first bills that was introduced into Australia's new parliament upon Federation in 1901 was the Immigration Restriction Bill aimed specifically at restricting non-white migration. Sadly, it was a policy supported at the time by both sides of politics and by the majority of Australians, and this went on for many decades. As it became known, the White Australia Policy was not only intended to keep Australia white but also enabled discrimination of our First Nations people. It is a past that we have to reckon with. The White Australia Policy meant that people who look like me—white and from a European background—were welcomed, and others were not.

Underpinning all of this was the idea that cultural difference within society should be accepted and celebrated. With the changes that we saw in the 1970s, we could finally celebrate this. This diversity that we know in Australia today creates a much more tolerant and just future for all Australians, not just those who seek to call Australia home.

It has been remarkable to see the reactions of everyday people, of everyday Australians, shift in very recent times as the plight of Tamil asylum seekers Nades, Priya, Kopika and Tharnicaa has been discussed widely in the media. It has frankly been overwhelming to see some of the attitudes shift in this debate about this family who until recently had been detained on Christmas Island. The majority of our nation are now saying, rightfully with horror, 'What are we doing to this family?' This family is welcomed and loved in the Queensland town of Biloela where they have made their home. Why is it then that the Morrison government has spent almost $7 million detaining this family?

We know sometimes regional politics can get a bit of a tough run, especially in the most recent couple of days with the second coming of Barnaby Joyce, but one clear and very profound thing in this place is the passion, empathy and sincerity with which regional and country members of this place have spoken about the contribution of migrants and refugees to their communities. We know kindness is not exclusive. It is not the bastion of one side of politics, nor should it ever be. I say—as Biloela and the community say—bring the family home.

Critical to Refugee Week is the ability to tell these stories—the stories of multiculturalism, the stories of culture, the stories of faith that all of us have—but particularly unique are those of the lived experiences of refugees. I could tell you hundreds of individual stories of the area that I grew up in, just from the street that I grew up in in Royal Park—stories of change, stories sadly of war, trauma, imprisonment and torture of people who have fled their home countries to call Australia home.

Growing up, these were families from Hungary, Poland, Greece and Italy in my suburb in Royal Park in the west. More recently, we have seen Sri Lankans, Vietnamese, East and West Africans, Afghanis, Syrians and Bhutanese in a new wave of refugees who have been welcomed to Australia in the way that we are so proud to do as a nation.

It is this reflection on how we have grown and changed as a community that is something probably my father would never have appreciated or foreseen when he arrived in 1957. He was a revolutionary. He was a part of the student-led uprising in Hungary in 1956. He was part of a movement that believed in justice and fairness. It is something that I am so proud to believe in and fight for today. He picked up arms and he fought for safety and for freedom. He fought for something as simple and as basic as the minimum wage in his nation.

He fled Hungary on 4 November 1956, 12 days after the revolution started, the very night the Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest. He escaped that night through the border into Austria. He was caught at the border, he was imprisoned, but he escaped. Thanks to the Red Cross, he found his way to Australia.

It is this story of my father that is replicated time and time again through those people who call Australia home and have arrived here as refugees. It is also the stories of the people who assist these refugees and assist these new arrivals to whom I want to pay my own personal appreciation today—the individuals and organisations alike that provide this assistance, from churches and faith-based bodies to schools, non-government organisations and legal assistance bodies. Their support and ongoing care is profound. Among these organisations are the Australian Migrant Resource Centre, the Red Cross, Multicultural Communities Council, AMES Australia, MYSA, the Australian Refugee Association, HOST International and Welcoming Australia, to name just a few.

Equally importantly to these stories are the stories we must be honest about and confront regarding the modern-day experience for refugees: the stories of offshore detention, sometimes indefinitely, on a phosphate island in the middle of the Pacific; stories of a slogan replacing a refugee policy, like 'Stop the boats'; the truth that my father—a tall, white, blonde man, a handsome man I must say as well—had a deeply different experience as a refugee in this country from that of modern-day refugees fleeing from other countries today.

It is incumbent upon me to use my voice in this house to speak about my dad's story because in talking about my dad's story, and my story, I seek to empower the stories of all refugees who are not able to be heard in this place. Similarly, many of my colleagues in this place have refugee stories of their own: the opposition leader, whose family came from Lithuania and Hungary (somewhat of a Hungarian takeover of the House of Assembly), his grandparents, Eva and Peter; the member for Enfield from Cyprus, with her parents, Christos and Eva; the Hon. Tung Ngo in the other place, a boat person from Vietnam, with his parents, May and Tu. Others also have connections through family and friends, through sporting clubs and organisations.

I know how important our welcome is to everybody in this place. It is not an overstatement to say that we are a much better place, a much better state, and a much better parliament for this diversity of representation. Australia provided my father with that place of shelter, thankfully, as it has done for every other refugee who calls Australia home today.

Equally important are the reflections, and Australia's modern tilt, away from this generosity and compassion of Whitlam and Fraser, two very different political people and two profoundly impressive and inspirational leaders. The stories of offshore detention for years, indefinitely, must stop. The story of slogans like 'Stop the boats' must stop. As members of parliament, as representatives of our community, we must say loudly, 'Not on our watch.'

My father was not turned back. He was not sent off to an island in the Pacific. He was not denied health care. He was never told that he would be denied settlement in Australia. He was not the victim of a refugee policy that seeks to deter those seeking asylum by making their prospective life and treatment in this country as miserable as possible.

The greatest gift refugees give us is their story. We learn and we grow to not make those mistakes again. We are so much better. This World Refugee Week we all celebrate the contribution that refugees have made to this country. I commend this motion to the house.

The Hon. D.G. PISONI (Unley—Minister for Innovation and Skills) (12:53): I thank the member for Cheltenham for his passionate speech. I can certainly sense the passion in that speech, being the son of an Italian migrant, who arrived here in 1952 escaping a difficult, awful time, certainly economically, in Italy at the time, who calls this place paradise.

Paradise is what he calls Australia, and he is absolutely right. It is a place of opportunity that has been enriched by our ethnic community, a community of people who have come here as refugees, a community that has come here under contracts of work. My father's passage here was an assisted passage with a two-year contract.

In the 1950s, there was a lot of demonisation of those communities who were not from an English background and whose members were not tall and blonde and European. Even if you were from Southern Europe, sometimes you had trouble getting into Australia because of the way you looked. Of course, there was the ridiculous dictation test which you had to pass in a European language. Even though you might have been Italian or Greek, you would have to take a dictation test in German or Spanish. If you did not pass, you did not get through, but really the motivation was that you did not have the right colour or the right look to enter Australia, so it was a pretty ugly time.

I was disappointed that we did not hear an apology from the member for Cheltenham for the 'Can't trust Habib' campaign that Labor ran in 2014 against Carolyn Power when she ran under her maiden name. This is the essence of the racism and fear of the 1950s and 1960s migration program. I can tell you how damaging that was to Carolyn and her family. When I was at the Park Holme Shopping Centre the week that that brochure went out into the seat of Elder, two men, on separate occasions, came up to me. They were in their 60s or 70s. They knew that I was the shadow minister at the time and said, 'That candidate of yours, she's not a Muslim is she? I'm not voting for a Muslim.'

Labor knew what they were doing with that campaign, but there has not been an apology from the member for Cheltenham, not an apology from a single member of that side of the house for that campaign. We still hear in the trade union movement 'cheap migrant labour'. How often do you hear 'cheap migrant labour' from the union movement, discounting the value of migrants in Australia? It is an extraordinary and disingenuous motion by Labor not to take this opportunity to apologise—

Mr Szakacs interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, member for Cheltenham!

The Hon. D.G. PISONI: —for the political tools they use against the migrant community for their own political gain. I can tell you that that is not why migrants come to Australia. They come to Australia for the opportunity it provides and they want to be part of the community. One of the things that migrant communities give their children that unites every Australian is that when they come to Australia they become part of our community and they give their children the Aussie accent. It does not matter what we look like, we all sound the same. The Aussie accent brings us together and yet there are so many cultures that now make up the Aussie accent in Australia.

We are one of the most successful countries in the world when it comes to multiculturalism and supporting refugees and migrants in a new place. We are a relatively new country: 60,000 years of Aboriginal heritage and 250-odd years of Western culture and Western heritage. We are very, very inclusive. It is just a pity that we did not start celebrating our Aboriginal culture earlier. I am very pleased that we are doing that now, and I am very excited about the Aboriginal Art and Cultures Centre on North Terrace that will be a main focus and celebration of Aboriginal culture in Australia.

I certainly support the sentiments of the member for Cheltenham, but I do not support how disingenuous the language was and the lack of an apology to the migrant and refugee community in South Australia for that despicable and disgraceful campaign they ran, knowing that they were pushing the racist button, knowing that the very people the union people target with their anti-skilled migration policies would respond to a racist campaign in the seat of Elder.

It did work, I saw it work, I witnessed it work. I had people telling me that they were not going to vote for a Muslim. There is no doubt that Reggie Martin knew what he was doing when he signed off on that brochure. It is interesting that there is not a single member of the Labor Party who is prepared to own that brochure. The DL distributed in that election is the hottest potato in town. It is an absolute disgrace that here we are, more than seven years on, and no-one has owned up to it and no-one has apologised for it.

Mr SZAKACS (Cheltenham) (12:59): I thank members for their contributions and commend the motion.

Motion carried.

Sitting suspended from 12:59 to 14:00.

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