Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It makes me very proud to speak to this motion that marks and celebrates World Refugee Day and occurs in the same year as the 60th anniversary of the refugee convention. On this important day I want to make a plea for a more reasoned and compassionate consideration of refugees and asylum seekers in Australia—a consideration based on the facts and on simple humanity.

I know from my experience of working with the UN with refugees in Kosovo and Gaza that people have a powerful attachment to their homes. I will never forget that bitterly cold winter of 1999-2000 and seeing hundreds of thousands of Kosovar refugees returning from neighbouring countries to their burnt out homes to spend the winter in UNHCR tents—or the millions of Palestinian refugees throughout the Middle East waiting in limbo for decades in UNRWA refugee camps for their internationally recognised right to return home to finally be realised.

My experience tells me that people do not leave or stay away from their homes without very good reasons. In 2001, President Vaira Vike-Freiberga of Latvia, who had fled her country as a child after the Second World War, made this statement at a meeting of parties to the refugee convention:

No one leaves their home willingly or gladly. When people leave en masse the place of their birth, the place where they live it means there is something very deeply wrong with the circumstances in that country and we should never take lightly these flights of refugees fleeing across borders. They are a sign, they are a symptom, they are proof that something is very wrong somewhere on the international scene. When the moment comes to leave your home, it is a painful moment.

…    …    …

It can be a costly choice. Three weeks and three days after my family left the shores of Latvia, my little sister died. We buried her by the roadside, we were never able to return or put a flower on her grave.

And I like to think that I stand here today as a survivor who speaks for all those who died by the roadside, some buried by their families and others not and for all those millions across the world today who do not have a voice who cannot be heard but they are also human beings, they also suffer, they also have their hopes, their dreams and their aspirations. Most of all they dream of a normal life.

…    …    …

I entreat you ladies and gentlemen when you think about the problems of refugees, think of them not in the abstract think of them no t in the bureaucratic language of decisions and declarations, and priorities in a sense that you normally think of things. I entreat you think of the human beings who are touched by your decisions, think of the lives who wait on your help.

Refugees are ordinary people fleeing from extraordinary circumstances. As a country, Australia has been deeply enriched by people who have come here as refugees. This is reflected in an email that I received a week ago from a young man in South Australia. He wrote:

I am a refugee. I arrived in 1981 at the age of three with my parents, having escaped Vietnam on a boat. We spent three days and three nights on an overcrowded vessel before landing in Malaysia. We then spent approximately nine months there before being granted a place in Adelaide. We had only the clothes on our backs and could not speak a word of English when we arrived. My father was a highly qualified teacher in Vietnam. He spent years going to university at night to regain his degrees and spent the days working as a postie to put myself and my brothers and sisters through school. I can still remember him leaving at five in the morning and not returning until late at night for several years.

I recall fondly the Australian battler friends we would have over to share in our family's milestones and being told by my parents not to copy their colourful language. 'Bloody hell' was something I learnt very early on! We were and are grateful to the Australian government and people for their support in those early years. We did need your support. We stayed at the Pennington hostel before living in housing trust homes until the mid-1980s. My father worked hard, and we bought our first Australian dream in the mid-1980s. He finally gained work with hard work—a full-time teaching position in the early nineties—and helped establish the Vietnamese curriculum in South Australia at that time.

And where am I now? I am a qualified thoracic medicine physician. I am in the final year of completing a PhD studying lung, head and neck cancer. And, yes, I could not speak a word of English when I started school at the age of five. I was 'one of them' on those boats, but luckily one of those who was given an opportunity to make a future here in Australia.

As this email shows, refugees are profoundly committed to peace and tend to pursue lives imbued with a sense of purpose, community and good fortune. The email also points to an era before mandatory detention. According to UNHCR's recent report, there is no basis in international law or practice for this policy aside from brief detention for initial identity, security and health checks. It is also expensive both in terms of cost to the taxpayer and in terms of damage to the mental health of people who have already suffered a great deal. I welcome the forthcoming parliamentary inquiry into mandatory detention.

Our first response to the term 'refugee' should be to understand that no-one willingly chooses to be one. Our second response as Australians should be to recognise that our share of the world's refugee crisis is actually a very small one and that, in fact, Australia is lucky to have its tapestry enriched with refugees. (Time expired)

See this speech in context