Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too commend the member for Greenway for this incredibly important motion. It is important in general terms but also particularly important to a large number of people in my electorate of Parramatta. I also have a large community mainly from South Sudan and some members from Sudan. In fact, I celebrated last July with the South Sudanese community on the day that independence was declared. I was at the University of Western Sydney and was due to make a speech and I should have been two speeches away but the crowd kept breaking out into revolutionary song so it took quite a while to get to my speech. It was a day of joy and hope. It is incredibly sad to note the recent appalling escalation in violence. So much of that hope if not shattered has certainly been severely damaged. The member for Greenway is right in that governments in the region and governments around the world must condemn this violence on both sides and call for both sides to adhere to the memorandum of understanding.

The people of South Sudan that I know are extraordinary people, in fact some of the most extraordinary people that I have met. I had not even begun to understand the lives that some of them had led when I was talking to one young man who was telling me of some advice his mother gave him. When I was young my mum gave me advice when I ate too much, that if I got a tummy ache and stuck my finger in my bellybutton it would make the tummy ache go away. That is what she told me. Well, this young man's mum had told him if he did not eat for five days he would grow really tall. Can you imagine in an Australian context a mum being in the position where she had to make up a story like that, to make it acceptable for her son that he was not going to eat for five days? It is a world that most of us in Australia simply could not imagine. He still believed it, by the way. His mum told him and he still believed it. He was in his 30s, I think, and he still believed what his mum told him. He thought that was why he was so tall. So that was a sign of great love from a mum. I still believe sticking my finger in my bellybutton makes my tummy ache go away as well. Again, what a—

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