Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in recognition of Harmony Week and, in celebrating our diversity and inclusion here in Australia, I also want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the Ngunawal people and pay my respects to elders past and present and also to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people, the custodians of the land on which my federal seat of Calwell is placed, as is yours, Deputy Speaker Mitchell, and yours too, the member for Scullin.

I want to thank the member for Scullin for bringing this very important motion to the House for debate. I also want to pay tribute to the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which was actually marked yesterday, and to reaffirm our commitment to the principles of equality and our fight against racial inequality in all its forms and wherever and whenever it occurs.

I want to reflect on why it's particularly important that we recognise and mark these two very important occasions. We've celebrated Harmony Week across Australia over 20 years now, and it has played a very important role in helping drive social cohesion and creating a sense of belonging for everyone in this country. But our country has been on a journey of inclusion and rejection of discrimination for decades. Back in the 1970s, when multiculturalism first became a defined policy framework, we set about building our legal and social frameworks. We—Labor—introduced the Racial Discrimination Act and we stressed that having a strong and vibrant communal fabric of many different cultures was about much more than just tolerance, or 'assimilation', as it was referred to. It was about celebrating and embracing all those different threads and recognising that, if they retained their colour and stayed distinctive, they could be woven together to make our society so much stronger and more vibrant.

My community is testament to this. We don't just do Harmony Day or Harmony Week; we actually live and breathe it on a daily basis. For us, 'everyone belongs' is more than a beautiful-sounding theme; it is an important daily truth and a plan for future action in the way in which we relate to each other. I'm particularly proud of the diversity of my electorate, with nearly half of my residents born overseas and over half who speak a language other than English at home. Hume City Council opened its doors on Friday to Harmony Week celebrations, and it's always an opportunity for our local communities to share their rich cultural inheritances and to bring it all together with a sense of belonging and sharing for all of us.

In an Australian context, citizenship lies at the heart of the idea that everyone belongs. It's through citizenship that we ensure that everyone who lives in this country lives equally as Australians and is recognised as belonging to the Australian family. Australia is a migrant country, and it has become successful because it has given people access to its citizenship and also to permanent residency as clear pathways to permanent settlement, which is why Harmony Week is a very important opportunity to reaffirm our national commitment to the principles of multiculturalism, to Australian citizenship and the Australian identity. These principles must include a fair and non-discriminatory immigration policy, proper settlement services and properly funded community services in a range of fundamental areas such as education and training, health, housing and recreation that are inclusive of and available to everyone who needs them.

I must also include a recognition of the incredible contribution that migrants of various waves and different backgrounds have made and continue to make towards this nation's future. We must never take for granted the hard-earned fight for inclusion, fairness and social cohesion that Harmony Week stands for, because there have always been those amongst us who cannot accept the principles espoused by Harmony Week. It seems a simple and obvious enough message, but, sadly, it is not something that everyone in this country accepts. We know this and we learn of this, and the member for Scullin gave an example of this. So we must always be vigilant. We must continue to move forward and work towards even greater access to services and equality of opportunity for all Australians. As we mark the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Harmony Week is a very important reminder to us all that racism is on the rise again.

So we have to continue to fight long and hard to protect our community against racism, and we've got to remain vigilant against its creeping effects, in all its forms and expressions. Belonging is not just a warm and fuzzy feeling. It means very deliberate and very concrete actions to ensure that everyone—regardless of their culture, their birthplace, their language or their religion—has access to safety; to shelter; to education; to work; to health care; to respect, more importantly; and to the freedom to live in peace in our communities right across Australia.

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