Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of this motion today, and I thank the Prime Minister for introducing it. This motion outlines one of the most fundamental principles of Australian society: that an individual should be judged according to their character, their ideas, their actions and their deeds, and not their race, colour, creed or origin. It is a particular honour to be the member for Berowra and to speak on this particular motion, because of my illustrious predecessor, Phillip Ruddock, who served as member for Berowra for 23 years but served the Commonwealth parliament for 43 years; our second-longest serving member of the House of Representatives ever. It is particularly good to be speaking to this motion here where my friend, the member for Bennelong who—like the member for Berowra—has been a great champion of multiculturalism in Australia.

One of the things about my predecessor—and this motion gives me an opportunity to pay some tribute to him—was his very strong connections with multicultural communities, along with his very deep interest in the diversity of Australia, and the nation-building that he sought to do throughout his political career. Phillip Ruddock's interest in multiculturalism goes back to the time in the early 1980s when he was shadow minister for multiculturalism. He was asked to produce a policy on multiculturalism, initially for the ACT, and became interested in getting to know some of the community leaders around the country. Phillip famously put his political career in the firing line, as it were, when in 1988 he crossed the floor to support Australia having a race-blind migration policy. I think, of the many important things he did in his career, this was actually the most important. This is a principle which is reflected in the motion today, but I think it is actually a fundamental principle of who we are as Australians. It was very important to the making of Phillip Ruddock, in terms of his political career—not just as a very good local member and as someone who could forge a policy agenda but as somebody who stood for something that was very deep and very important. I really pay tribute to him for that.

Philip was also our longest-serving minister for immigration, and he enjoyed that portfolio; he was also minister for Indigenous affairs, and that portfolio is also encompassed by some aspects of this motion. Phillip saw his role in the immigration portfolio as building the nation. Some people see the immigration portfolio as merely a border protection portfolio, but that was not how Phillip saw it. He saw it as both choosing the next generation of people to be Australians, and welcoming them, ensuring that they had good settlement services and ensuring that they became and felt part of the broader community. Having observed Phillip closely, I think that being immigration minister was something that left its mark on him. But it was also, undoubtedly, one of the most difficult policy areas imaginable. It was difficult because he had to make some tough decisions about Australia. He had to make some tough decisions about border protection when large numbers of boats came—and I think every immigration minister faces those difficult decisions. While I am paying tribute to Phillip, I also want to pay particular tribute to the present immigration minister, Peter Dutton, who has done a fantastic job—as his predecessor, Scott Morrison, did—in ensuring that we have public confidence in the migration program by ensuring that people continue to come to Australia in an orderly manner; that we do not have the deaths at sea; that we do not have 50,000 people turning up on our doorstep; and that we do not have the large number of people in detention that existed under the previous government. The success of multiculturalism in Australia today is really founded on the issue of public confidence. That was something that both Phillip Ruddock and Peter Dutton have stressed in their contributions to the public debate on this issue. Diversity is the goal. Diversity is fundamental to who we are, but you cannot have public support for diversity unless you have public confidence that we have an orderly system to bring people in.

For me, the right to equality and the idea of a race-blind immigration policy is absolutely axiomatic. I am very proud to have been the first Jewish Australian chosen by my party from New South Wales to serve in the House of Representatives. It is an interesting fact that in the first Commonwealth parliament the people of Indi in northern Victoria chose Isaac Alfred Isaacs, one of the framers of the Constitution and later Chief Justice and Governor-General, the people of South Australia chose Vaiben Louis Solomon and the people of Fremantle, just out of Perth, chose Elias Solomon. Both Solomons were free traders, and Isaacs was a protectionist. Those two streams formed the modern Liberal Party, but it was another 115 years before my party, or its antecedents, in my state chose somebody of my faith.

Prior to becoming a member of this parliament, I served on the representative body for the Jewish community in New South Wales. I had a particular role as chair of the community relations committee of that body. The NSW Jewish Board of Deputies' community relations committee is absolutely fundamental, because its role is to build harmony and build relationships with other religious communities and other ethnic communities across the state. That is a very important thing in terms of a harmonious multicultural society—not just that you have tolerance and diversity, but that you have people making an effort to share their differences and to celebrate the similarities of what makes us Australian. That was a great privilege for me, because it gave me an opportunity, just as some of my previous work with Philip Ruddock had done, to interact with some of the great community leaders involved in the multicultural space. I particularly think of people like Stepan Kerkyasharian who is, if you like, the godfather of multiculturalism in New South Wales. He served on the Anti-Discrimination Board of NSW for many years, he served on what is now the Community Relations Commission as its president for many years, and he served on SBS multicultural radio to help create a sense of inclusion and a sense of multiculturalism across the broader community.

I do not just think of people like Stepan, I think of people like Sev Ozdowski, of people in the Chinese community like Benjamin Chow and Tony Pang, of people in the Indian community like Parveen Gupta and Pallavi Sinha, of Professor Agar and Sanjeev Bhakri from the Hindu Council, and of some of the other amazing people I met along the way. I am very lucky to represent a community that, like the member for Bennelong's electorate, has a great deal of ethnic diversity in it. About 40 per cent of people in my electorate were born overseas, which is consistent with the national population. There are significant Chinese, Indian, Korean, Italian, Lebanese and Malaysian populations in my community. It is that difference and that diversity that brings strength.

One of the things I find whenever I am speaking to people who have chosen to be Australians, who have come from other countries to settle here, is that they have an enormous pride in being Australian. Australians by choice are a great benefit to our country, because, very often, they have left circumstances, regimes and situations that are not as good as they find here. They are grateful and feel fortunate to be here, and they want to see our country prosper, because, if our country prospers, they too shall prosper. That is a great strength of our system.

One of the other aspects of this particular motion is the commitment to reconciliation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. I thought I might begin by talking a little bit about that. I have been on a real journey in relation to the issue of recognition of Indigenous people in Australia. I must say, at the beginning of my journey I was opposed to any recognition of Indigenous people, not because I do not wish to see Indigenous people prosper and succeed, but because I was deeply concerned about the implications of adding words to the Constitution that might have unforeseen consequences.

Over the last three or four years I have had the privilege of working with a group of Indigenous leaders, people like Noel Pearson, Megan Davis and Marcia Langton, to come up with a suite of proposals which I think will provide a good pathway to achieving reconciliation and recognition of Indigenous people. It involves an extra constitutional declaration of recognition, designed by Australians and voted on by Australians. It involves amending and updating the words in the race power so they reflect and codify current practice and that they change those words for being a power for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs. It involves removing the spent provision in section 25 in the Constitution. Finally, it involves creating a body that can provide advice to parliament and advice to government on laws relating to Indigenous people.

As we know, whenever you make a law you make a better quality law when you have consulted the people who are most affected by it. That is why some sort of body that provides a voice for Indigenous people, in the policymaking and law-making process, would be a great advantage. I commend the motion to the chamber.

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