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

[by video link] I rise on this fourth anniversary of arrivederci Holden and the fifth anniversary of antio and gule gule Ford, when the last of Australia's once great car manufacturing industries closed their doors and, with it, ended an iconic era of postwar nation building in this country.

Holden, like the Ford factory in my electorate that shut shop in 2016, was more than just an icon of Australian car manufacturing. Both were major employers of the thousands of postwar European migrants who came here under the Arthur Calwell migration program. Jobs were key to establishing the basis of a new life in a faraway country. Australia needed their labour in order to grow, and they needed hope for a better life for themselves and their families.

On the assembly lines and factory floors they not only built cars but also forged stories of mateship and camaraderie and built suburbs and communities around them—Broadmeadows and Ford, Elizabeth and Holden; entire suburbs and streets that brought cultures and faiths together and rose to build contemporary multicultural Australia. These workers were embraced by Labor and the union movement, who collectively defended their rights and aided their integration into the Australian community, a community that they shaped and changed. These migrants didn't just make 'Australian made'; they in fact made Australia.

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