Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The electorate of Lalor is home to many who have come across the seas to join our fabulous community and live and work in our wonderful country. On Saturday, I joined 120 excited people becoming Australian citizens at the Wyndham City Council citizenship ceremony. It is one of the privileges of being the member for Lalor and it is something I do often. These are very moving events. There is joy and pride, and I am always humbled by the courage and optimism of the individuals and families who, like all of us who are not descended from the First Australians, have made the brave decision to leave their homeland and join us here to build their futures. There are always tears and smiles when taking the pledge to Australia and its people. I want to share with my community exactly what that pledge is:

From this time forward … I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey.

The people who take this pledge on Saturday have all been in Australia for a minimum of four years. They have all completed their citizenship test in English. Speaking English is at the heart of our citizenship test and many I have met who speak English do so at a university level because they are professionals who have been educated to a university level; but many do not have that. I am proud that in Australia we support those people who come in on refugee and humanitarian grounds to reach conversational levels of English to allow them to become citizens in this country, having to pass that test written in English.

I often reflect during those ceremonies about my time in schools teaching English as a second language to the children of refugees and those joining us here on humanitarian grounds, who come from non-English speaking backgrounds and often had very little formal education in their home countries. I think of those students and the way they grabbed those opportunities, and the work that they did in my classroom and classrooms around this country to learn English so that they could make their contribution to this country. After 27 years of teaching, I know how many of those young people are now great contributors to our community and to our economy. They have gone on to become workers in our shops, in our restaurants and in our cafes or to run businesses. Many of them, I know from the days when I taught them, are professionals in the Australian economy. Some are running import and export companies. We cannot underestimate the contribution that new citizens have made to this country over many decades and I would hate to see us limit the opportunities for people to become citizens in the future in this country.