Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am indebted to the member for Canberra for putting all of that on the public record in this place, because it very nicely ties in to some of the comments I want to make. It highlights very much in one sense why the government has a commitment to creating a sense of liberation and freedom for the people in Iraq. Having the most culturally diverse electorate in Queensland brought home to me very quickly early on in the whole Iraq debate the reason that Hussein had to go. When I had Kurdish community members coming to me telling me the same sorts of stories as the member for Canberra has just passed on to the House, it made me realise why that vicious and brutal regime had to go and why Australia had to take a stand as a strong democracy. So I thank the member for Canberra because those stories have to be told. It is important that they are told. I think with regard to the way in which Australia meets and greets refugees of conflicts in other places, meets and greets those who have come as business migrants and meets and greets those who have come as the poorest of migrants to this country it is important that we give them an enormous sense of encouragement.

Yesterday was Harmony Day, a government program that I once administered. I know that Harmony Day is meant to be 365¼ days of the year. It is not meant to be an ephemeral orange-ribbon-wearing occasion. It is meant to remind us that Australia is the most culturally diverse nation in the world. One in four of us was born in another place. One in four of us has at least one parent born in another place. So, for many families in Australia, Australia is a very recent experience. I am seven or eight generations along. On my mother’s side it is eight; I am seven on the Hardgrave side, and I always say I am two parts Scottish, one part English and one part Irish.

I see that the member for Bendigo is laughing. But what that means is that I like a drink and I want someone else to pay for it. At the end of the day, our cultural diversity in this nation is part of the economic strength that we have. I know that schools like Runcorn Heights State School value their cultural diversity. They bring the parents of their kids together. They celebrate diversity, show off their cultures and share their food. At Warrigal Road State School Muslim women arrive, some wearing scarves and some not, for their annual fete every year and provide the food alongside the Greeks and the Italians. This is all fantastic. We all have to eat—some of us less and some of us more—and sharing each other’s food and culture is an important thing to do. But it is more than that.

It is important that we do not create a sense of victimhood in the minds of those new to Australia. And yet you have a lot of the peak bodies writing to us saying: ‘People are being victimised. They are being pinned down by comments in the paper and made to feel awful.’ This has been the Labor Party’s way in the past. When we came to office in 1996, we promised an end to this separate treatment—this favoured treatment for one group over another. I remember the stories that cultural groups were told, ‘Don’t tell anybody else what we are giving you; but if you vote Labor, you’ll get more of it.’ They kept it secret from each other. Australia was in the process of Balkanising under the Hawke and Keating governments.

This government has said, ‘What have we all got in common?’ The No. 1 answer is that we are all part of this country. What brings us together sets us apart from other nations. It is not unreasonable for us to challenge every new arrival to this country to be who they are but to be it for Australia. It is not unreasonable for us to make available to them the tools to integrate, English being the No. 1 tool. And, providing we can get proper and quick recognition of the skills they bring and the educational experiences they have had, and repair the differences between what is required and what they have, we have to get these people to work.

I see people like David Kemp at BDS—a fantastic shopfitting company in Brisbane—going out of their way to bring people like Sudanese refugees into their workforce. He has 130 people in his factory at Crestmead and about 25 per cent of them are Sudanese refugees. Why? Because they are great workers. Why? Because they value the job they have. He wants to see more of that, and I do too—because once we give people a sense of confidence and we give them the competence to participate, they build a commitment to Australia and they have a sense of ownership of the place. That is what this government has done that is so different to the work done by the previous government.

The Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils has asked me to:

... show leadership and provide reassurances to Australia’s vibrant culturally and linguistically diverse communities that Australia is a compassionate, welcoming, empowering and inclusive society and that there is a place for everyone.

I happily do that. I also publicly state that these people have made an enormous contribution to Australia for many decades. (Time expired)