Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

In my first term of parliament, I shared a stage many times with the then Liberal state minister for multicultural affairs, Nick Kotsiras, and he would always, in a heartfelt and genuine way, say that in Victoria you would find that multiculturalism is a multipartisan affair and that whatever happens in the rest of the country on questions of race and ethnicity you will not find people in Victoria seeking to divide to win votes. I think he was dead right, and I think in many respects we have Malcolm Fraser to thank for that.

My colleagues in the Senate will be canvassing more broadly some of the broader issues that have been raised, and especially Mr Fraser's post-political life. Of course, there are many, many areas where my party and I would not agree with the decisions or actions that were taken by him. But here I just want to briefly pay tribute to the real impact and way in which he shaped my electorate of Melbourne. The suburb of Richmond, in Melbourne, was the first port of call for many people who were amongst those tens of thousands who came to Australia and came to Victoria in those years after the Vietnam War. Many of them are still there and some 40 years on, marking the anniversary, many of the leaders of the community have begun a sustained effort around the country to say 'Thank you, Australia, for taking us in,' and especially to say thank you to Malcolm Fraser.

Reading some of the tributes in the newspapers over the weekend, it was apparent that many of the members of that community viewed him with the same reverence that they might view their parents or their grandfathers. I think it is telling and a remarkable tribute to the foresight of the decision to adopt that particular migration policy that we are in a position as the Australian community to say back to those Vietnamese refugees and the ones who came after them, 'Thank you for helping put Australia on the map,'—and thank you for putting places like my electorate of Melbourne on the map. I am sure that every member in this place believes this of their own electorate, but I genuinely believe that, when it comes to questions of race, humanity and culture, if the rest of Australia were more like Melbourne, it would be a better place, and I think in many respects we have Malcolm Fraser to thank for that.

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