Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In question time on Tuesday we saw remarks by the Minister for Health and Ageing that I know will distress many Australians. He made a statement that made it very clear that he believes that, if you are of Greek, Spanish, Vietnamese or Cambodian background, then you are not Australian. This was not an off-the-cuff remark made down at the pub on the spur of the moment after a few beers. He made the remark in parliament in response to a dorothy dixer question from his own side. He came armed with a newspaper clipping that formed the basis of his answer. The answer was prepared. Both the statement and the question were made with forethought.

A sense of belonging, of being valued, is a powerful force. We all know that. We know it in our families and in our workplaces, but it is equally true of our communities and our country. What is going on in this country that our government representatives are saying over and over to large numbers of us: ‘You don’t belong here. You are not really one of us’? How would we expect that message to affect large numbers of us, our neighbours and our work colleagues?

White Australia is dead, and good riddance to it. We will never be ‘white Australia’ again, and it is about time that government members got used to that. We have the world within this country now. All of us can draw out the best from that or we can foster the worst. It is hard enough for people to come to this country to find their way, and it is equally hard for their children. It is a great gift to be raised in two cultures, the culture of their country—and in case anyone on the government side is confused by that, I mean this country—and the culture of their parents. It is a great gift if we welcome it, but, if we use that difference to alienate, we create extraordinary potential for conflict.

It is not our differences that divide us, it is the way we treat each other. Human interaction is the base for all human conflict, and the way we treat each other also creates cohesion in our society. We do not need a government doing its best to divide us and creating bad history between sections of our nation. How many more years are we going to see the ignorant, divisive attitudes of members opposite spewed forth onto the front pages of newspapers, conveniently timed to douse the latest scandal or the latest government failure?

I know that sometime during the next few weeks we will see another announcement by the government of some sort of Australian values training, again sending out a dog whistle that there might be groups lurking in our community that do not share Australian values and that might be trying to divide us. I would like to point out that there is a group, right here in this building, lurking about and trying to divide us. It is called ‘the Howard government’. The people who most desperately need to learn Australian values are members of the government. Let us enrol the Minister for Health and Ageing in a course in Australian values and, while we are at it, the member for Hughes, the member for Indi and the member for Mackellar, all of whom have made outrageous remarks in the last few months, and all of the others who were not outraged by the comments of the Minister for Health and Ageing. If nothing else, it might keep them quiet and out of this place for a while, and that would be a good thing for this country.