Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank my colleague the member for Gellibrand for bringing this motion forward to acknowledge the 40th anniversary of Racial Discrimination Act 1975. Four decades have now passed and, if we look at Australia's history book, this is a great innovation, one far removed from the former White Australia policy and one that quite frankly now encompasses a very positive attitude to having a broader, more harmonious community settled in this country.

The Racial Discrimination Act—as a matter of fact, in the same year it was brought in—coincided with the Fall of Saigon. We received our first wave of refugees from Vietnam. This wave led to the initial migration of 50,000 people coming here and making Australia home, and quite frankly it was the first major endorsement of recognised settlement of a large body of people in this country. However, historically there have been major gaps in our legal system when it comes to discrimination, particularly in respect of our racial discrimination laws. This led to the introduction of the Racial Discrimination Act, which was the very first antidiscrimination and human rights legislation passed by the Commonwealth parliament. Not only does its existence embody Australia's commitment as a signatory to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which itself was ratified in September 1975, but the act was groundbreaking in respect of the way it went about fostering social cohesion within the broader Australian community. It represents Australia's new commitment to being a multicultural nation and securing for all Australians, regardless of their background, equality before the law.

In my community, which boasts over 150 nationalities, I regularly get to see cultures on display. I see and visit various temples, mosques, churches and other religious institutions. But moreover, I get to see people who have come and adopted Australia as their home and see their commitment to making this a very positive development here in Australia and one which certainly plays out very much through their children.

Today I am hosting students from the Thomas Hassall Anglican College in my electorate. One of the things they have been studying is the issue of discrimination. I welcome students from the school and I am glad that this debate took place while they are here.

In my electorate, over 30 per cent of people in my electorate come from an Asian background. I also have a very large population in my electorate from the Middle East. The vast majority of people who have come to my electorate are refugees. I spoke about the first migrants from Vietnam. At the moment, migrants who are coming here are fleeing the war in Syria, the conflicts in Iraqi and elsewhere. They come here to settle. They bring their hopes and their dreams to give their families a better way of life.

One of the things I think is very important in their settlement is that they can do so in the full knowledge that they will not be discriminated against in this country. That is why we were very concerned with the attempts last year of trying to prune back the Racial Discrimination Act, particularly in respect to section 18C, which would have made it unlawful for people to act out racial hate speech, which would have a deleterious impact on the harmonious society encouraged in this country.

I commend the efforts of the Australian Human Rights Commission and in particular, the Racial Discrimination Commissioner, Dr Tim Soutphommasane—I should know his name better than that because Tim is actually of a Laotian background— (Time expired).

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