Annette Ellis (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

A section of that community held a fundraising activity for the Special Olympics ACT participants, who were recently competing in the games in Brisbane—successfully, I might add. At that particular function, several hundred people generously donated to help those kids get to the Special Olympics in Brisbane and the major thankyou speeches were given that day in Greek. Was I offended? Not at all, and neither were any of the Special Olympians. The question here is really: why do we devise these crazy tests and what grounds and values do we put a tick beside to indicate that they are a good idea? Not one of those people in that room was failing to contribute to our community—not one of them. If they want to have their big speeches in Greek, good on them; I could not be happier. That is not the test. The test is what they are doing living in and contributing to this community, not whether or not they have a speech at the Greek club in Greek.

I would be less cynical about the government’s motivations in raising this issue if this very government had not slashed almost $11 million from its Adult Migrant English Program. How crazy. It is unethical for a government to constantly talk about the importance of citizenship and integration whilst cutting funding to programs which will facilitate that very integration. There was no legislative requirement in years gone by. There was a course of encouragement and welcome, with an English language course available—for all of those years—for those who could get there. Of course they benefited if they could. But the member for Sydney brought out some very important points about the reality of living with family, working and having all sorts of commitments, and whether or not you can easily access these sorts of English courses, values courses or whatever else we are thinking about.

The government often raises these issues and applies them to certain ethnic and religious groups in a way that concerns me. My fear, my deep concern, is that the debate about citizenship is being used as a political tool and could end up dividing people in this country in a way that we have not seen before. The member for Port Adelaide put it so well. The bipartisan attitude towards citizenship in this country is now under threat, and that is what we do not want to see happen. I am happy to debate the issues about language skills and citizenship but not if it is going to be used to marginalise and discriminate against certain people in this country.

I will finish by saying that I have seen the new ads on television encouraging citizenship. They are all very lovely, but I have not seen one yet—maybe it exists; maybe I am not watching TV at the right time of day—where there is an obviously black person or an obviously veiled person. They are all looking fairly mainstream. The other comment I make is: why run these ads encouraging citizenship while at the same time proposing that we put up hurdles and barriers to that very citizenship process? For me, nothing is better than to go to a citizenship ceremony in my city, here in Canberra, and to see the joy and the commitment that people have made. Some have come here by economic and social choice. Some have come here from the most shocking of backgrounds. But the one thing that they have in common is that they stand up and take that oath really wanting to do so. I do not know what test we could devise that is going to make them prove more than they do now what they really want to do by living in and contributing to this community.

In summary, I support these bills on the whole, as a bitter pill, but I strongly support the motion moved by the shadow minister for immigration. Among other things, it opposes the increase in residence requirement to four years. That increase is a crazy notion. I really hope against all hope that that amendment will get up and we can get a bit of sensibleness back into part of the bill.

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