Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to thank the member for Bennelong for bringing this important motion to the House, and I want to especially acknowledge the work that the member for Adelaide has done in this place and elsewhere around the nation and right across the world, particularly with the World Hellenic Inter-Parliamentary Association, of which he is vice-president. The Greek community owe him a debt of gratitude, and I look forward to working with him to promote Hellenic activities and all that is great about Greece in the future.

I come from Wagga Wagga. It is a proud multicultural city. We have 114 nationalities represented in the city and they speak 107 languages, and that is just fantastic. Wagga Wagga is home to one of the largest Yazidi communities outside the Middle East, and I want to pay credit to the now opposition leader for the work that he did to enable them to have safe passage and a safe home under our compassionate visa arrangements. I well recall the conversation which followed the multiple genocides and attacks in 2014 at the hands of the extremists known as Daesh or ISIS, where the Yazidi community were targeted and killed. The now opposition leader, as immigration minister, called me and asked me if I would be prepared to have these Yazidi refugees settled in Wagga Wagga, and within a nanosecond I said yes. It wasn't even a consideration or a thought. Of course Wagga Wagga would. It's been such a welcoming community. Hundreds of Yazidis now call Wagga Wagga home. One of them, Dawlat Gundor, in fact worked for me, and what a great presence and smile she brought to my workplace! She's now studying law here in Canberra. The story that she had, from back in her homeland to where she is now, is quite an incredible one. Wagga Wagga is much the richer for our Yazidis and, of course, our people from so many other nations right across the world.

I am not making this political, but I want to talk also about the work that we did as a coalition government in nine years to help multicultural issues and to assist people who came to this land from elsewhere, right across the world. We know that in the second verse of our national anthem we say:

For those who've come across the seas

We've boundless plains to share.

Indeed we do. The previous coalition government provided $10 million in funding through the Community Languages Multicultural Grants program to support not-for-profit community language schools. For the Adult Migrant English Program, the 510-hour cap was removed and the amount of support was made unlimited. There was a $50 million investment in the highly successful Safer Communities Fund. We made places of worship safer and more secure, and that was important. The Safer Communities Fund, through early intervention grants, provided $119.5 million for 133 recipients for activities to engage youth at high risk. These all helped the multicultural communities. We invested in $8.1 million into the Fostering Integration Grants program to support activities that celebrate and recognise Australia's multicultural communities through festivals and events. We all have those events in our home towns. Indeed, in Wagga Wagga, the FUSION Multicultural Street Festival is one of the largest, if not the largest, community festivals outside the Wagga Wagga Gold Cup horse race, first run in 1873. This fusion festival, only instituted in recent years, has grown to the extent that thousands of people celebrate and commemorate all that is great about multiculturalism.

The former government launched a dedicated campaign to inform culturally and linguistically diverse communities about skills and training opportunities, and that was important. It resulted in tens of thousands of enrolments in skills training from multicultural Australians. We need to continue to invest in those who come across the seas to make Australia home. We need to ensure that they know they can come to a land which is safe and secure and, indeed, that they can contribute, as they have for many years past, to make our nation even greater.

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