Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This week across Australia we celebrate Refugee Week. It is a time to acknowledge and celebrate the contribution that refugees have made over the years in building our great nation. It also gives us an opportunity to acknowledge and praise the hard work of a number of community organisations assisting refugees with the often challenging process of settlement. A Refugee Week event that I will be attending tomorrow is at the Fairfield Migrant Resource Centre and it is entitled Restoring Hope. The title is very fitting considering settlement in Australia often gives refugees a sense of hope and a second chance at a peaceful life for them and their families.

I often mention in this place that I proudly represent the most culturally diverse electorate in the country, with 50 per cent of my electorate born overseas. Many of them fled horrendous environments of oppression and persecution, often facing immediate threats to their lives prior to coming to this country. This year marks the 37th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and therefore of the settlement of the Vietnamese people in Australia. Vietnamese people were often referred to as our original boat people. Back in the late-seventies and through the eighties Australia played a very strong part in looking after a large number of displaced Vietnamese refugees. We opened our arms and our shores to the innocent families who fled the communist regime.

Since the first settlement of Vietnamese people in Australia they have worked hard and made a great and positive contribution to their adopted homeland. Their highly entrepreneurial skills have made the Indo-Chinese some of the most successful small business owners in Australia. The Vietnamese have certainly developed a very positive sense of community. I would like to take the opportunity to acknowledge the role of Vietnamese Community in Australia in providing representation and a voice for the Vietnamese people in our society. I would also like to congratulate a very good friend of mine, Tri Vo, on being elected as the VCA's national president last week.

Shortly after the Vietnamese refugees, we had those fleeing the murderous atrocities of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. During the eighties the Cambodian refugees journeyed to Australia, following a similar path to the Vietnamese. It was certainly a very fraught path, with many dying at sea on their way here. The Cambodians too have made a very noteworthy contribution to our society. I acknowledge Lina Tjoeng, the President of the Khmer Community of New South Wales, and Mrs Thida Yang, from the Salvation and Cambodian Cultural Association of New South Wales who have worked very hard to ensure the Cambodian community is adequately supported and represented throughout my community.

We recently opened our arms to a large number of refugees from the Middle East fleeing the atrocities of the war in Iraq. Many Mandaeans and other Christian minorities who fled to refugee camps in neighbouring Syria, Jordan and Egypt eventually found their way to Australia. Many of those have been settled in the Fairfield and Liverpool areas of my electorate. Because of the large concentration of refugees settling in Liverpool and Fairfield, it is essential that we have adequate avenues of support for newly arrived refugees.

I want to praise the valuable work of migrant resources centres, including the Liverpool and Fairfield MRCs in my electorate, and acknowledge the work that they do for our community to ensure that people are properly settled and able to become productive in the general fabric of the Australian way of life. The Fairfield MRC president, Julio Gruttulini, and coordinator, Ricci Bartels, and the Liverpool MRC chairperson, Dr Amad Mtashar, and manager, Kamalle Dabboussy, have worked very hard to assist individuals who have often gone through very harsh and challenging conditions before making their new life here in Australia.

The assistance of the MRCs goes well beyond helping just with language difficulties. They provide vital information to assist families in finding schools and employment opportunities, and even to the point of identifying social and recreational opportunities for themselves, and particularly for their children, so that they can be part of our normal way of life in Australia. Ensuring the smooth and successful settlement of all our migrants, especially our refugees, is essential in order to enable them to become productive citizens of this great nation.