Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

A Gippslander am I, though from the west, from dairy, potatoes and asparagus. The good soil of the Kooweerup swamplands drew the immigrants from Europe and so began the great cultural change to our community. Few newcomers spoke English, especially the older immigrants, but their children, whilst maintaining their European ways, quickly adopted the new environs of football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars. We also changed: our chops and three veg were interspersed with spaghetti bolognaise, osso bucco and minestrone soup. We were birthing a multicultural world but we did not know it, where contributions from newcomers to sport, education, church life and the workplace were gratefully accepted.

Our community responded to new parameters. My father-in-law, an estate agent and valuer, concluded that he needed to learn to speak Italian to capture the emerging Italian-speaking real estate market. A talented agent he was; he did well and learnt to speak Italian. My father, a draper, employed Italian and Dutch shop assistants to better communicate with his customers and to ensure future customers.

At a recent house-warming on the other side of Melbourne for my nephew, who is courting a young lady of Italian descent, revelations of family ties reaching all the way back to early Kooweerup emerged. Three and four generations on, we are one people linked by our common heritage but still with our differences according to that same heritage. Prosperity favours the brave, and brave it was for the postwar Europeans, English and Irish to bring family to an English-speaking country on the other side of the world. How daunting, how embarrassing for eight-year-old sons and daughters interpreting and speaking on behalf of mum and dad. The pre-eminence of the father in a European household and his standing would have made such times difficult, if not downright degrading, for father and son.

By the way, as a preteen, local Anglo, as we were called, I had no inkling of the daily problems faced by our own new Australians. After all, their kids went to a different primary school. The Protestant-Catholic divide was still rolling along in the fifties and sixties, so only the Dutch, Germans and those from the Baltic states came to our school. The new kids at school did not talk much. They did not speak English and therefore struggled at school for a while. However, once they mastered the language they shone like beacons in the classrooms. Unlike some local parents, many of whom pulled their kids from school to work on the farm at the earliest opportunity, the new Australians saw the value of education, encouraging their children to stay at school, as long as they were succeeding.

New Australians stuck together. No wonder! For them, there was no sense of belonging, except for church, where Latin was the norm in mass and where they outnumbered the locals, pleasing to the church to this day. Every aspect of life—sport, health care, communication, employment, social interaction—was new to them. Everything was different. I for one am in awe of those who came to this country to enjoy its great opportunities and, in return, to repay the nation with generations of proud, intelligent, energetic young Australians.

We owe a debt of gratitude to all those who come here to participate in the building of this nation, the Great South Land. Today we have immigrants from over 200 countries, many facing the same sense of alienation and separation which those before them faced. Twenty-two per cent of us are overseas born and many more of us are the children of those born outside of Australia. Hopefully, generations will deliver the same dynamic future for our current intake of immigrants. After all, that is the experience of those gone before.

As the Howard government introduces a new citizenship test for prospective Australians my community has given me a very clear message: ‘Fine, but don’t make the test too hard.’ Statements of mine have received some considerable coverage—which is surprising, considering the test is not meant to be onerous or a barrier of any sort to gaining citizenship. The fun and games in the run-up to the next election will begin when journalists start randomly using the 70-odd questions in the citizenship test in live interviews with politicians of all persuasions. Perhaps the test set for new citizens will become the bridge too far or a stumbling block of our own making.

New Australians must wonder about our collective wisdom sometimes. In my experience they never bothered to fix something that wasn’t broken; anyway, the new arrivals had work to do. The reality of the problems and difficulties faced by new immigrants was writ large for me at the recent funeral of much loved local Corry Kooloos, who came with her husband and seven children from Holland and arrived at the Bonegilla migrant camp. She was on her own because her husband went straight to work on a farm outside Melbourne. She had six boys and three girls, all very close. As Anton said to me this morning, they had all done very well.

Corry’s funeral was one that I would not have missed. At the funeral, her daughter Ada recounted the story of her mother never forgetting how life began in Australia with an act of kindness. Two wonderful Italian men who saw the plight of the family getting off the train to go to Bonegilla immediately grabbed their bags and carried them and the youngest children all the way from the train to Bonegilla migrant camp.

The first migrants arrived at the Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre in the Wodonga district in December 1947. They came to Australian under the immigration scheme. During the 24 years Bonegilla was open 320,000 people passed through its gates. Each, like the Kooloos family, has a special story to tell. The experiences of the Bonegilla migrants span the range of human emotions. They often talk of the isolation, fear, discomfort and broken promises, but they remember the warmth of the people they met, the friendships they developed and the opportunities that became theirs. These people came to build a nation. From those who worked at the Snowy River hydro scheme, Latrobe Valley power generation and the coal mines of Wonthaggi to the fruit growers of Shepparton and Mildura, they lived the dream in the new opportunity that was multicultural Australia.

The Australian Citizenship Amendment (Citizenship Testing) Bill 2007 is an aptly named piece of legislation. It is possibly the most testing approach to the subject since the passing of the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948 first established the legal category of Australian citizen. It is, I believe, one of the most serious tests of our maturity since we finally discarded the remnants of the Immigration Restriction Act, or White Australia policy, in the 1960s and 1970s. One of the controls built into that legislation was of course the infamous dictation test. This was used to either bar the entry of, or effect the removal of, anyone considered to be an undesirable. It was simple but effective—a 50-word dictation test in any European language, and could be applied at the whim of an immigration officer. I am not for one minute suggesting that the test proposed by this bill represents a return to such draconian measures, but I am concerned that the very idea of a new test will invite comparisons to this effect among newcomers to this country who aspire to Australian citizenship.

Part of the rationale behind the proposed test is said to be that it will reassure the Australian public and that it has their overwhelming support. However, it is clear from some of the media reporting of comments on the proposed test that it has anything but universal support. These comments have ranged from derision regarding the form and content of the questions to outright rejection.

There is no doubt that the resounding success of Australia’s postwar immigration has been based squarely on the notion of inclusion and a fair go for all. We have welcomed people from more than 200 countries and embraced many aspects of their cultures. Distinguished Scottish author Andrew O’Hagan picked up on this in his opening address to the Sydney Writers Festival earlier this year. He told the festival opening:

This is a great country and your greatness may always lie in a notion of your inclusiveness.

But he added a qualification:

It is your job to make it more than just a notion. Inclusiveness is a virtue to be fought for and won, and Australia has a heart, or it did in the minds of my people growing up ...

There is one vital ingredient that is needed if we are to achieve this ideal of inclusiveness: respect, the sort of respect that I and my family hold for the Kooloos family as representatives of the many who came to our country area. A recent article on this very subject in the Melbourne Herald Sun caught my eye. In the article the author Brian Patterson drew together the thoughts on the subject of the likes of Mahatma Gandhi, Anglican leader Archbishop Rowan Williams and South African religious leader Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Patterson says that, despite all of the antidiscrimination laws, there is a distinct lack of respect, a lack of tolerance for our diversity of race, creed, sexual orientation, cultural values, political persuasions or ideology. I find this a rather negative view of Australian society—and one, I would hope, that is not widely shared. There are and always will be those who preach intolerance and division, and sadly they seem to attract more than their fair share of headlines. But I am heartened by the tolerance and respect shown by the overwhelming majority of messages received in my office on matters relating to immigration and citizenship.

In his second reading speech, the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship said it was important that Australian citizens understand the values that guide us and how our country works. These are values that I believe are already at work in our community. These are the very values that I spoke of earlier. They include the notion of a fair go, and it is this particular value that we need to keep in mind in preparing this citizenship test. Will this legislation offend the imaginings of those who come here in the belief that their dreams of this wonderful land can become a reality? Will this legislation offend the spoken word of an immigrant father, ‘This is my dream; my son manifest’? Will this legislation be born not out of our inclusive history but instead out of an exclusive future? If so, the nation will be poorer for the words. Legislation that comes before this House has to be tested on two levels. First, it must meet the aspirations of and be of benefit to the whole Australian community. Second, it should not be open to abuse so as to disadvantage even the smallest section of the community. While I will support this bill, I would urge the government to keep this latter test at the forefront of its considerations when framing the detail of the proposed test.

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