Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Earlier this year I was standing in a queue in Springfield, Illinois, reminding myself that I had been to the United States once a year every year since 2005. I have burned a neat hole in my pocket buying tickets to see NBA games in stadia from Orlando through to Chicago and from Boston through to Sacramento. Besides a sports addiction driving me to America, I have been attracted to other elements of the nation. I have sat with 20-somethings in Silicon Valley on four separate trips to that part of California, these young people energised by the prospect of using tech to change and improve the lives of many others. I have sat with some of the 20,000 Australians who live and work in Silicon Valley along with many others from other parts of the world—nearly 50 per cent of the people in Silicon Valley come from other parts of the world to contribute to development in that part of the United States. I have chatted with Americans who speak so fondly and warmly of our country, always promising to visit to learn more about our nation—a nation they think of so highly.

The biggest thing that stands out in my mind about America is the promise of America—the promise that it will always stand up for liberty, for freedom and for the pursuit of happiness, not just for its own people but for others beyond its shores. I go back to what I mentioned at the start—me standing on a chilly winter's day, in a queue, having driven hours to get to Springfield, waiting to have a look inside a place that was home to one of the greatest American presidents we have ever known, Abraham Lincoln. In this day and age some might consider that house to be tiny, but it proved to be a massive formative backdrop for someone who not only did so much for his own country but also inspired others in other corners of the world. Tested by the savagery of a civil war, Lincoln held his country together by ensuring that its promise of freedom and liberty wouldn't be compromised. It was his efforts that I thought of as I walked to see another memorial in Washington DC—the face of Martin Luther King etched out in stone standing proudly in that nation's capital. It has been a shining beacon—as much as that description has become commonplace. I think of the words of one woman sitting at the feet of another:

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Then many years later I hear these words in an angry hall in December 2015—another man trashing the lines of that sonnet with words that crack across the globe: 'Donald J Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on.' I can't believe this is where this great country has got to—that it exercises that ban and that it shuts out people on the basis of faith.

I visited the country at that point in time before the inauguration, friends saying to me that it was probably premature to think that it was not right to visit again some time later. But I think it's wrong that a nation that promises so much in freedom can shut out people on the basis of faith and do it in that way. It is wrong. It is against what America stands for. I think of the words of Paul Keating when he said that 'once they have pawned the crown, it's hard to reclaim the inheritance'. He is right. What America is doing to itself and the way that it's behaving is disappointing to so many of its friends. I can't see myself going back to America while this is being maintained. I cannot think of people like me, of my faith, being taken out in front of their children in a line and queuing up to visit the States, just on the basis of faith. America, I think the world of you. But I and people like me cannot be shamed by you. This is not the promise of the America we love. America is better than this.

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