Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

On Saturday 26 October, I attended the SIEVX Memorial at Weston Park in Canberra, with SIEVX Memorials Association ACT, for the 23rd anniversary commemorations of the SIEVX tragedy. The memorial honours each of the 353 asylum seekers who lost their lives, with a dedicated pole representing each life lost. The tragedy occurred in October 2001, in international waters, somewhere between Australia and Indonesia, where a vessel carrying around 400 asylum seekers capsized. Three hundred and fifty-three people died, the majority of them women and children.

This memorial in Weston Park stands to honour those lives, but it's also a monument to the compassion of the Australian community, and the effort that went into establishing that memorial and to caring for it is a really powerful symbol of that. The memorial itself includes 353 poles. There are taller poles, representing adults who lost their lives, and smaller poles representing children. They are arranged so that one part of the memorial shows the actual size of the boat that all these people were on. You can stand in there and only imagine how that many people would fit into that tiny space and the terror that they experienced. Each of the poles has artwork on it by a school, an individual, a community organisation or a church from around Australia.

I want to pay particular tribute today to SIEVX Memorial Association ACT for the work they do in maintaining the memorial. They have volunteers who come and mow the grass around the poles. They have also been restoring the art, and it's a really beautiful job that they've done. There are too many to name, but I do want to name Paul Meyer and Lauren Honcope, and Sophie Singh and John Minns from the Refugee Action Campaign Canberra, for the work they do there.

I'm very proud to represent an electorate that cares deeply about asylum seekers and refugees. This is one of the issues that I first became politically active in, and I want to assure you again that it's something I'll always advocate for within our government. There have been a group of people meeting outside my office on Thursdays, and I was happy to meet with them and chat with them. They are particularly raising awareness of people caught in the fast-track process. I just want to mention here that those are 10,000 Australians living in limbo at the moment, and this is an issues I will continue to raise within our government.

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