Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Territories, Local Government and Major Projects) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week I was proud and pleased to be involved in a number of Australia Day events in my electorate of Bradfield to mark this important national milestone. I attended a citizenship ceremony at Bicentennial Park in Pymble conducted by Ku-ring-gai Council at which 110 people from 24 countries became citizens of Australia. The speech at the event was given by Nimalan Rutnam, a successful local lawyer who told us he was born in Sri Lanka, left due to difficult local circumstances in his teenage years, studied in India and in the United Kingdom, and subsequently made his way to Australia where he has been a citizen for many years.

I congratulate Ku-ring-gai Council and the mayor of Ku-ring-gai Council, Cheryl Szatow, for this successful community event. I congratulate everybody who became a citizen at the event. I particularly want to acknowledge Gaie Carrick who was born in the UK and over 25 years ago, I believe, met Geoff Carrick, a friend of mine who grew up in and remains in Bradfield. Geoff met Gaie in the UK and brought her back to Australia, where she has lived for some 25 years. This year she became an Australian citizen and I was very pleased to be at the ceremony where that occurred.

Later in the day, I was able to attend a citizenship ceremony at Hornsby council chambers conducted by the Hornsby mayor, Steve Russell, in his normal affable and entertaining style where some 41 citizens from 14 countries became Australians; eight people originating in China, seven people from the Philippines and six people from India. I had the pleasure of speaking subsequently with Harpreet Singh, who came to Australia from India six years ago and is training to be an accountant, and with Jie Hua, who came from China eight years ago. Both spoke to me about how pleased they were to become Australian citizens.

It caused me to reflect that it is highly appropriate that, as a nation, one of the things that we do to celebrate our national day is to hold citizenship ceremonies, because our nation is so diverse, with over one-quarter of adult Australians born overseas. In my own electorate of Bradfield, over 40 per cent were born overseas and 30 per cent speak a language other than English at home. According to the most recent census report, nine per cent are of Chinese background, two per cent of Indian background and over two per cent of Korean background. The diversity in the electorate of Bradfield is in line with the diversity that we see all across this great nation of ours. Our country is one of the great successful immigrant nations of the world, and it is highly appropriate that that is one of the things we mark and celebrate on our national day, on Australia Day.