Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In so many ways the debate on refugees in this country has been very politicised, very confrontational and born of conflict, and I think that is a great pity. On Saturday, I went down to the John Harvey Gallery, at the Salisbury council, to witness a celebration of the Bhutanese refugee resettlement day. It was a celebration of the successful resettlement around the world of the 100,000th Bhutanese individual. Bhutan has seen 130,000 people being displaced, and from 2007 to the present day the UNHCR has successfully resettled 100,000 of those people.

It was great to go down to the Salisbury council to hear Kamal Dahal, the Chair of the Bhutanese Australian Association of South Australia, along with the council and the council staff, help conduct a really wonderful celebration of their journey from Bhutan to Salisbury and to the northern suburbs more generally. We heard Laxmi Dahal talk about that journey, about the refugee camps and about the consequences of 100,000 people being displaced from subsistence farming to camps where the houses were made of dried bamboo. Laxmi spoke about the terrible fires that went through some of those camps and the dangers that were present, with the lack of drinking water and the like.

From the trials of those camps, it was great to hear about the progression to Salisbury and to the northern suburbs more generally. It is wonderful to see that many Bhutanese are now buying their own homes in the local suburbs, which is part of the Australian dream. I think it is a testament to their character that, when the Sampson Flat bushfires went through my electorate, they were amongst the first communities to offer their help and assistance. They are true Australians in every sense of the word and they are a real asset to the country. At a time when there is so much confrontation around the refugee debate we should take the time to celebrate the significant achievement of the UNHCR, because it shows how resettlement can be done. The United States took 60,000 refugees from Bhutan; we took 5000. If we had taken 5000 more or 10,000 more we would have been a stronger nation and a better nation. We would have helped many of these poor people in what has been a time of trial. So we should consider this very successful resettlement program when we look to our resettlement programs more generally.

See this speech in context