Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Fremantle for her very important question, raising as it does an important issue that confronts this House and this nation as it sits this week. We have proudly created a multicultural society with record levels of postwar migration. Indeed, I stand here as one example of that migration. Overwhelmingly, across those years, that multiculturalism, that unity, that non-discriminatory immigration policy has had bipartisan support. I am prepared to pay tribute to Prime Minister Menzies who supported postwar migration. I am prepared to pay tribute to Prime Minister Menzies for creating the Colombo Plan. I am prepared to pay tribute to Prime Minister Holt for ending the White Australia policy and to Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser for admitting Vietnamese boat people to this country and for creating SBS as one expression of our diversity and unity—bipartisanship all of the way.

For those of us who represent growth communities in this country—and I do—know that in those growth communities there is often pressure on people when they see inwards migration. People easily fear change; people easily fear difference. When they see increased pressure on public services sometimes that fear can turn to resentment. It is the job of national leadership to reassure in the face of that fear and to explain to people that there is ultimately nothing to be afraid of. Just as we have incorporated migrants in this country in the past we will incorporate migrants in this country in the future. As well as reassuring it is the job of national leadership to make sure that we plan services and communities properly so that fear does not turn to resentment.

There is another path and that is seeking to channel that fear and that resentment into political gain. We have seen that other path used in national politics. We saw it used by One Nation. I am so glad that this nation defeated that spectre of One Nation by coming together as political parties across the divide of this aisle and putting One Nation last on how-to-vote cards. I am really proud our nation did that. But I would have to say that spectre of those ugly politics, that grubby path, is before us again. The principal task of this parliament this week is to banish that spectre again.

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