Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is good to have an opportunity to speak about something which has concerned me for a while—and that is the opportunities for members of migrant communities around the country. On Saturday night, I had the great pleasure of going to a Congolese event—people who had come from the Democratic Republic of Congo. They had a ceremony to celebrate education. They presented certificates to those who had graduated from primary school, from high school and with higher degrees. It was quite something to see so many people who had come from DRC. They wore mortar boards and academic gowns. It was really good, a real celebration of the opportunities this country holds out to people and that they have taken advantage of. I said to them on the night that they are not just great examples within their own community but great examples to the broader Australian community as well. French is the first language, the main language, in the Congo. In addition, many of them have come from very difficult refugee backgrounds. So they are a great example.

What worries me a little bit is that there are some people in our community who have migrant backgrounds and who have been in the country for many years—and yet they do not speak English. It could be just me, that they do not want to speak to me—so they may make these things up. But I was speaking to the president of the Vietnamese community, the highly regarded Dr Hien Van Nguyen. I asked him, 'Why do so many people in the community seem not to speak English—because I am worried about how they are going in society?'

He said, 'The way to fix that is to make them pay for the interpreter service.'

Already we know that the Department of Human Services provides, for most migrants, 510 hours of English language training, so the opportunity is certainly there. I am not saying that it is easy to learn English by any means, but the opportunity is certainly there. The trouble is that there are some places in society where people can avoid having to speak English. They can live in their house—the kids go off to school, that is true; they learn English—and go down to the local shops, where people speak the same language they did in the old country. And if they ever need to interact with government services the department pays for that interpreter service itself.

What I worry about is whether people are being isolated in society, whether they are having access to opportunities that having even a reasonable command of the English language holds out to people. Employment, their rights and obligations: these things are best known when you can speak English and do not have to rely on someone else telling you what those rights and obligations are.

We need to be careful—whether it is for ease or whether it is through suppression of some people within those communities—that a parallel society does not exist; that the negative parts of culture that people have brought from other countries—like forced marriage or female genital mutilation, for instance—are not being perpetuated because someone is being held back from knowing that these things are not right. They are not reasonable parts of culture; they are absolutely wrong. The lack of either wanting to do English language training or being allowed to do English language training is holding people back. I really do worry about the parallel society problems that not only pose a threat to the security of this nation but also pose a great threat to those people who are being held back from opportunities. The potential of these people is not being realised because they have trouble with the English language. We should put a bit more pressure on people to participate to make sure they have all the opportunities that this country holds open to people.

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