Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise here today to talk about equality for all Australians. I have spent a long part of my life talking about equality and working towards equality. I have devoted many years to that. So I stand here today torn, I guess, in speaking about this issue. On the one hand, I think: it is the year 2016. Shouldn't we, as a progressive, First World nation, take it for granted that all Australians have equal rights and that the equal rights for all Australians are embedded in everything that we do? Don't all Australians already enjoy equal rights? Why do we even need to be talking about this in this day and age?

But, on the other hand, I know through my own experiences that, though we have formal equal rights for most things—bar of course marriage equality—and for most people, those formal rights that are by law accorded to all Australians do not necessarily translate into substantive equality and into substantive rights, into an equality where all Australians are not just accorded equal rights but have equal access to opportunities and equal outcomes. That kind of equality recognises that not all of us start life on an equal playing field. The provision of equal rights for all means that no single person's rights or the rights for some group are over and above anyone else's rights or the rights of another group.

This morning I spoke to the media about an experience I had while growing up. When I was 10 years old, I was pursued by a young girl of the same age, 10 years old, in the schoolyard. For some reason she disliked me from the very first day I started at this new school. As a 10-year-old, I never quite understood why she disliked me. I had never done anything to her. We had never had any real altercations in the schoolyard, but Christine—that was her name—and her friend Iris would seek me out every single lunchtime and every single recess time. They would follow me around the playground and taunt me. One lunch time it culminated in Christine spitting in my face, telling me that I was a dirty Muslim, a dirty Arab, and that she hated me because I did not believe in Jesus. Of course, Muslims do believe in Jesus, but that was beside the point. I then went to my teacher Mrs Phillips. I was very distraught when I reported to her what Christine had just done. Rather than her offer any kind of comfort, rather than pull up Christine and Iris for the comments they had made, it was a case of: we are not considered equal.

I note that there are some people in this parliament and in this government who would seek to argue that they have a right to free speech. I would ask those people whether they think that their right to free speech is better than or worth more than my right to feel protected, whether they think that their right to be a bigot is worth more than my right to have a form of recourse, to have some form of justice, to be able to call out the things, the activities, the behaviours that are taken against me not because of anything I have said or not because of anything I have done but simply because of the colour of my skin.

We cannot claim to have an Australia where all Australians are equal if we do not pursue all rights equally. We cannot claim to have an Australia where every Australian has equal rights if we pursue the rights of one group over and above the rights of another group. All rights are worth pursuing and all rights are worth pursuing equally. So I ask: is my life and my rights the lesser? Am I second-class citizen where my right to feel protected is less than somebody's right to be a bigot? These are questions that I think we should not have to ask in the year 2016; but, sadly, we do have to ask them.

This morning I received death threats. I do not worry about myself because, in this place, I am afforded the protections that not many people are afforded. But these were death threats against my family. Somebody came out and said that they would like to kill my family. Where are my rights?

Can we honestly say that all Australians have equal rights when we are sitting in this parliament debating about whether or not we should take away an essential law that has served Australia well for 20 years, a part of the Racial Discrimination Act that has served Australia well for 20 years and that has protected people like me for 20 years? Can we honestly say that we have achieved equal rights for all Australians?

Just to finish: we cannot talk about equal rights for all Australians without also talking about the substantive and very real fact that inequality exists for many Australians in many, many different ways, not just in the ways that I have just mentioned through my personal story but for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, for our LGBTIQ communities and for the communities of the outer suburbs for whom inequality exists in the lack of access to infrastructure, services and job opportunities. In my electorate of Cowan, a child growing up in Wanneroo is 30 per cent less likely to finish school. A family living in Lockridge has half the income of those in the inner suburbs.

Until we recognise the inequality that exists for people in Australia in all its forms, not just in the forms that affect people like me—because, let us face it, I am also privileged to be in the position that I am in and feel honoured to be in the position that I am in. Inequality also exists for people who are not racially different or who are not religious minorities. It exists in different ways for different people in Australia. Until we recognise the real and substantive impact of those inequalities across Australia, diversely across all forms and all backgrounds for all Australians, we can never stop talking about this. We need to continue talking about this, and, more than that, we need to continue taking action to ensure that those inequalities do not continue to affect standards of living, quality of life and mental health for people across Australia. For we will never be truly free, and we will never be a truly progressive country, until we are all well and truly equal.

See this speech in context