Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) in 1999, the 30th General Conference of UNESCO proclaimed annual observance of International Mother Language Day (IMLD) on 21 February; and

     (b) about 200 different languages are spoken throughout Australia;

(2) acknowledges:

(a) the significance of preserving Indigenous languages as a link to Indigenous culture and histories and as an expression of identity;

(b) the social, cultural and economic benefits of multilingualism to the Australian community; and

     (c) that encouraging Australians to learn a language other than English should be a priority for all levels of government; and

(3) calls on the Government to observe IMLD on 21 February across Australia and to promote the preservation and protection of all languages used by the people around the world through:

(a) promoting the active participation, revitalisation and maintenance of local Indigenous languages;

(b) continuing the National Library of Australia's collection of oral history and available alphabets of spoken languages as a means of preserving the multi-lingual inheritance of the people of Australia; and

(c) supporting second language instruction in Australian educational institutions.

The 21st of February is United Nations International Mother Language Day. On this day, UNESCO and the United Nations agencies participate in events that promote linguistic and cultural diversity. In Spain, the Linguapax Institute, an organisation devoted to preserving and promoting linguistic diversity, award their prestigious linguistic prize on this day.

In particular, in Bangladesh it's a public holiday known as Shaheed Day, where locals celebrate Bangladesh's culture and the Bengali language. They commemorate the service and the life of four students who were killed on 21 February in 1952 while fighting for the right to use their mother language, Bengali. In Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, a monument to these martyrs, known as the Shaheed Minar, stands as testament to their sacrifice for the maintenance of their mother language. I welcome members of the Australian Bangladeshi community to the parliament today for this important motion regarding International Mother Language Day, and I wish all in the Australian Bangladeshi community a happy Shaheed Day on 21 February. I'm very blessed to represent a community that has a very active and passionate Bangladeshi community, and it is something that I'm very, very proud of.

Internationally, 6,000 languages exist throughout the world, according to the United Nations, but 43 per cent, almost half of those, are endangered languages. We know that in our own country, where we have the oldest continuing culture in the world in our Indigenous Australians, many of the original Indigenous languages have, unfortunately, disappeared. We are home to the oldest culture in the world, and that culture has spawned a rich history of a multitude of languages spoken for tens of thousands of years. It's important that this parliament acknowledges the significance of preserving Indigenous language as a link to Indigenous culture and history and as an expression of identity.

It's also important that we recognise the social, cultural and economic benefit to multiculturalism of Indigenous language, and promote multilingualism in Australia—because that hasn't always been the case. In La Perouse, in the community I represent, I've been told by elders that, when they were at school at La Perouse Public School, they were actively discouraged from speaking their mother language, the native language of the Bidjigal people, and received a rap over the knuckles if they did. As a consequence, there are hardly any people left in that community who speak that native language so rich to Australia's history. We must do more to preserve our mother languages.

We also must do more to encourage Australians whose mother language is English to learn a second language, particularly through our schooling system. Many other nations in our area, the Asia Pacific, do promote bilingualism and multilingualism, and we can do more to promote learning another language in our educational institutions. When we learn another language, not only do we learn the words, the vowels, the nouns, the sounds and the grammar but we learn about a people, we learn about their connection to their land and we learn about their history and their culture and the things that are important to them.

I wish to congratulate all of those involved in promoting International Mother Language Day here in Australia, and I call on Australian governments to do more in public institutions, particularly public libraries, to set aside areas to ensure that people can research and educate themselves about mother languages. I wish to pay tribute to Nirmal Paul, the chair of the Mother Languages Conservation Movement in Australia, who is with us here today, and to my good friend Azad Alan, who came to see me some weeks ago about this important issue. I want to thank them for educating me about the importance of this day and mother languages. I commend this resolution to the House and wish everyone a happy International Mother Language Day.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

John Alexander (Bennelong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Member for Kingsford Smith, for raising this important subject. I'll confess my ignorance; I didn't know that 21 February was International Mother Language Day. However, now that I do, I am happy to support this good cause as one that is very important to my electorate. One of the greatest features of Bennelong is the wide spread of diasporas across our suburbs. Communities from across the globe have come to Bennelong and made a permanent home, with the great benefits of combining different cultures. We have large communities of Italians, Armenians, Koreans, Indians and Chinese. Each of these communities now lives in a hybrid cultural space. They are proud Australians, but they are still closely connected to the culture of their ancestors. As a result, our community is regularly home to celebrations from across the world.

It is the merging of these many rich cultures that creates the dynamic and unique flavour that pervades the suburbs of Bennelong. As I say regularly: our diversity is our strength, our greatest asset. This strong diversity is instantly apparent to any visitor to Bennelong, but it can be quantified thanks to the last census. Nearly 22 per cent of all residents speak either Cantonese or Mandarin; a further 9,000 residents speak Korean; just under 3,000 speak Italian; and a similar number speak Arabic. There are also high levels of Armenian and Farsi spoken. In total, 51 per cent of homes in Bennelong speak a language other than English at home.

Being able to speak more than one language is a huge asset to individuals. It is in this shrinking world that our cross-border connections are more important than ever. Speaking another language also opens up understanding as well as doors; speaking another language offers explanations of that culture's history, its traditions and its national narrative. It is truly a gateway into another culture. Bilingualism also offers insights into the vocabulary and structure of grammar, as well as improving the capacity of additional languages to be learned in the future. There are links with bilingualism and people who have an increased capacity for lateral thinking and problem-solving. Furthermore, children who learn a second language are more likely to retain the second language as well as speaking those languages with more fluency. This is why bilingual schools are so important.

I'm proud to say that I have excellent bilingual schools in the electorate. The Italian Bilingual School in Meadowbank was founded 15 years ago to provide for families, with many immigrants from Italy coming out to Ryde in great numbers in the 1950s. I had the pleasure of visiting the school back in November with Senator Fierravanti-Wells for the unveiling of their new school hall, which the government helped fund with $550,000. Congratulations to the principal, Silvia Onorati, and her team.

Ryde Persian School is another wonderful institution which provides language classes to our community. Mrs Forouza Soltani runs this school, which operates as a not-for-profit organisation, teaching Persian to people of all ages and backgrounds. Impressively, the school is currently run by volunteers. Both parents and members of the community have come forward to teach each year.

Finally, the Australian Chinese Community Association of New South Wales has been operating the acclaimed ACCA Chinese Language School in Eastwood for over 40 years. It is one of the oldest, largest and most-renowned Chinese language schools in New South Wales, teaching both Mandarin and Cantonese. This community has had great success in finding a balance between integrating into the Australian way of life while retaining important aspects of Chinese culture, fusing the two nations into a unique but strong local identity. The ACCA president, Shirley Chan, and the principal, Phil Xu, have created a wonderful community institution, and to have had it enriching our area through social and educational initiatives for so long is truly a reason to be proud.

This is a small snapshot of the schools across Bennelong. There are undoubtedly many more across the electorate that do good work in keeping other languages, like Armenian, Korean and Arabic, current within our suburbs. Sadly, time prevents me from mentioning them all, but I would like to thank everyone and appreciate the work that they do and that is so essential. Local organisations like the Australian Chinese Community Association— (Time expired)

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with great pride that I rise as well in support of the motion put up by the member for Kingsford Smith, the motion on International Mother Language Day, which is celebrated on 21 February. I would also like to acknowledge our wonderful guests who are here from the Bangladeshi community and other communities, where this particular international day was recognised in accordance with some historic events that took place. We should acknowledge that as well.

International Mother Language Day, which began in the year 2000, places a great focus on the benefits of language and the diversity of other tongues and how important that connection is, because language is what connects us to our mothers, our fathers, our grandfathers, our grandmothers, our great-grandfathers and our great-grandmothers—and so goes the chain. The moment you break that language chain is the moment you break that connection with your ancestry, history and everything that makes you who you are. It's so important to celebrate this particular day, especially in a nation like Australia, where we have a wonderful multicultural community. For example, in my electorate of Hindmarsh, over 200 languages are spoken, everything from Hindi to Greek, Italian and Chinese—you name it, it's spoken. It's so wonderful to attend some of those cultural events I attend every weekend, as no doubt most of you in this House do as well. Chinese New Year events are coming up this week. We have Greek festivals, Hindi festivals, Sikh festivals, Deepavali, Indigenous events around the country, the Italian festival, Carnevale, and many Bangladeshi festivals.

I take great pride in being able to say a few words in Greek when I attend the Greek festivals or even Italian at the Italian festivals I go to, simple lines like, 'Ciao. Mi chiamo Steve Georganas. Sono il deputato federale Hindmarsh. Grazie per avermi invitato'—very simple—which means, 'Thank you very much for inviting me. My name is Steve Georganas. I'm your federal member of parliament.' You see the joy on people's faces from those two or simple three lines and the connection that you make with people. A second language is something we should acknowledge and something that we should pursue as a nation. We see around the world in Asian countries and in Europe children from a very young age start studying two and three languages to be able to connect with the world.

We have one of the greatest gifts in the world, our multicultural communities in Australia, where a lot of people have a second language through their mother tongue. We under-utilise these languages and the connections that they have with people overseas, with business, with families and with communities, and I think this is an area we need to concentrate on as much as we can. For example, in my electorate, we have many schools that still teach Modern Greek because of the big Greek population in the electorate of Hindmarsh. I'm very proud to be able to say that, as a second-generation Australian, I speak fluent Greek. My children, who are third generation, speak very, very good Greek. Now I hear my grandchildren uttering the odd word of Greek, which brings tears to my eyes because it's that connection to their great-grandfather and great-grandmother which is so important and something that we should cherish here in Australia.

Also, some of our radio stations, SBS and ABC do great work in Australia as well. SBS has the radio language programs of half an hour or an hour of different languages, seven days a week. In the world that we currently live in with the internet and the electronic media that we have, it is so easy for people who are new arrivals to immerse themselves directly in the nation that they come from and miss out entirely on what's taking place here because of the modern-day access to the internet and to everything else. Connecting with the local community is also very important. I'd like to congratulate SBS for promoting news services in mother tongues, everything from Italian, Spanish, French and German to Bangladeshi, Turkish and Greek—you name it, they do it. We have to promote this, ensure we safeguard it and ensure we do get community news out on local radio.

A shining example of an outstanding citizen in my electorate dedicated to mother tongue is Adelaide's Professor Michael Tsianikas, who is the director of Greek language at Flinders University and the Australian Centre for Hellenic Language and Culture. Their program inspires younger generations—third, fourth and fifth generation Greek Australians—to excel and support the Australian Greek community to grow. I'd like to congratulate Professor Michael Tsianikas, Dr Maria Palaktsoglou and Antonis Litinas for their terrific program in Modern Greek at Flinders University.

Julia Banks (Chisholm, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to proudly speak to this motion because, in my electorate of Chisholm, over 130 languages other than English are spoken everyday. Indeed, just under half of all households speak a language other than English. People come from China, India, Greece, Italy, Korea, Bangladesh and Japan, to name a few. Chisholm is a fine microcosm of Australia in its reflection of diversity and language, which is so deeply connected to culture. As the member for Hindmarsh just reflected, it only takes a few words of greeting to someone in their mother language and connection is established. Like the member for Hindmarsh, I have had the honour, quite often, of sitting on the stage and you see that connection in the faces when you say a few words in a mother language.

As a young child, I attended Greek school in Oakleigh. This was for the prime purpose so that I could speak Greek to my grandmother because, as a family, we only ever spoke English in the home, being second-generation Australian. Learning French through to my senior student years was also an incredible asset in my early career and travels. The ability to speak another language is such an incredible asset, and none more so than in this great country. I'm so incredibly proud that in Chisholm we have the highest number of Mandarin speakers than any other electorate in Australia. Indeed, we have 23,327 constituents who are of Chinese heritage, and thousands of people in Chisholm, be they first, second or third generation Australian speak a language other than English, and it is so important to preserve that skill and ability.

On 21 February, we will observe International Mother Language Day. Now in its 18th year, this day serves to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and recognises the importance of being multilingual. Research has proven that learning another language at an early age aids in development and promotes greater reading, writing and numeracy skills, as well as equipping children with important values and knowledge that are passed down through generations. Language is deeply connected to culture, identity and history, and as languages slowly fade out, traditions and memories are at risk of disappearing too. Some parents encourage their children to learn English as their first language in an effort to give them a head start at school; however, this can have the counter risk of distancing the child from their cultural heritage. Certainly, when I go to cultural events in my electorate of Chisholm, often in front of vast audiences of children from different cultures, I always encourage them to hold on to that part of their culture.

The Prime Minister highlighted in his Closing the Gap speech today that language is the great connector. He brought attention to the fact that over 600 various dialects actually existed before European settlement for our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Language is the carrier of culture and there are a number of fantastic organisations in my electorate who do wonderful work in promoting languages, and they have made fantastic contributions. Some of these include: the Whitehorse Club, a pillar of the Italian community, whose fantastic events are a highlight of the calendar year; The Monash Chinese Friendship Association, whose tireless volunteers are always showcasing the best of Chinese culture, and I look forward to celebrating Chinese New Year with them and the Asian Business Association of Whitehorse and the broader Chinese community this coming weekend; The Telugu Association do a wonderful job promoting Telugu culture, language and literature, as well as encouraging further integration with the local Chisholm community; and, of course, the Greek Orthodox community of Oakley and Box Hill and districts, who provide excellent support to members of the Greek community. I was only this weekend at the Greek Lonsdale Street festival in the heart of Melbourne representing the Prime Minister together with the minister Kelly O'Dwyer. It was a wonderful event and celebration of Greek culture in Melbourne, which has the highest population of people of Greek heritage next to Athens.

I would like to also acknowledge a number of language schools who hold classes in schools across Chisholm. These include: the Australasian Centre of Chinese studies, XJS Coaching School, Mang-Non Vietnamese Language School, MCCC Chinese School, Xin Jin Shan Chinese Language and Culture School, Ariston Greek School, Protypo Greek Centre, Waverly Korean Language School, Thai Education Centre of Victoria and many more.

In September last year I had the pleasure of attending the 20th anniversary of the Taiwanese School of Melbourne. It is a fantastic language school that under the leadership of Vincent Liu and Principal Ying Ying Ho, teaches traditions mandarin literature and language as a fun and friendly learning experience. Through language schools, students are able to gain valuable knowledge. Australia is an immigrant nation and International Mother Language Day is an opportunity to reflect on the importance of retaining or learning a mother tongue to ensure languages and cultures continue to thrive both in Australia and globally, promoting greater understanding.

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

I've stood in this chamber many times to speak about the rich and proud diversity that the electorate of Lalor boasts. One of the defining traits of this diversity is the many languages other than English spoken by members of our fast growing community, which, I note, ticked over 250,000 people in the city of Wyndham in the last few weeks. In acknowledgement of International Mother Language Day on 21 February, I want to take a moment to reflect on the wonderful multilingual community I represent and the significance that native language has in the broader Australian community.

Firstly, the electorate of Lalor is a place where people from all over the world have come together to create a unique mixture of culture and language, where traditions are accepted, created and cherished. I have said this many times throughout my time as a federal member in this chamber, but it specifically rings true when we talk about the role of languages. Multilingualism brings our community opportunities to gain an appreciation of different cultures. Through language we can gain an understanding of the variety of experiences that make our community the vibrant multicultural place that it proudly is. But it goes further than this.

Language gives opportunity to participate in, revitalise and maintain a connection to the mother country from which the language originated. It provides an important and significant link in the ties between culture and history, between culture and place and between traditions of heritage and commitments to our future in our great multicultural democracy. There are abiding images in the schools in my electorate that acknowledge our diversity of heritage and language. In some cases there are maps of the world tracking where children hailed from. In Tarneit Secondary College's central foyer over 50 flags are draped from the ceiling in a stunning statement. We have an obligation to ensure that our children are learning mother tongue languages so that they are kept alive for generations to come.

There are many examples of schools and organisations that are already implementing programs which encourage multilingualism, and they ought to be commended for encouraging participation in learning languages. In my electorate we have a strong constituency of native Bangla speakers. For the local Bangladeshi community International Mother Language Day is special. The local Victorian Bangladeshi Community Foundation, led by President Nurul Islam Khan, celebrates their school's teaching of Bangla and acknowledges the impact of the loss of language often used by oppressors to wipe away cultural identity. The local Bangladeshi community know more than many that language is inherently connected to culture and identity.

Late last year I spoke in this place of the Victorian School of Languages, a government school under the guidance of Principal Frank Merlino, which is the largest language provider in Victoria and Australia. Since it first opened its doors, the VSL has played a vital role in ensuring that languages are taught to primary and secondary school aged students. Last year, I spoke specifically of how the VSL at Suzanne Cory campus implemented Karen classes for students, and I mention this again. It has been accredited at VCE level, and last year the first classes of VCE students sat the year 12 exam. This is a great achievement, one that is so important for the continuation of languages other than English being taught and passed down from generation to generation. Further, it is pleasing to note that 2018 will see an expansion of the VSL in Lalor. Just this Saturday, VSL ran its first Spanish, Macedonian, Malayalam, Russian and Telugu classes at Point Cook Senior College. These five languages are in addition to the eight languages already run by VSL in Lalor, including Karen, Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu, Chinese, Tamil, Malay and Korean. I would like to give thanks to Ms Yris Becerra Silva, who has assisted in gathering community participation in the implementation of Spanish into VSL at the Point Cook campus.

Multilingualism provides social, cultural and economic benefits to our community in Lalor and the broader Australian community. We ought to be encouraging Australians to learn a language other than English, and the work of the VSL in this space is fantastic. I commend the work of the Victorian education department and the Victorian School of Languages in teaching languages other than English, but I note there are always ways to continue to revitalise education, and I would like to see links to Indigenous Australian languages made so that the important Indigenous languages are not lost. I note that in one of the schools in the neighbouring seat of Gorton there is an Indigenous language being taught. In the 18th century there were over 250 Indigenous Australian language groups. Today there are fewer than half that number. More than just used as a literary device of communication, language provides the opportunity to tell story; it provides a sense of identity. The link to this identity is fragile, and we must do everything we can to preserve it, to revitalise it. We must continue to promote active participation in Indigenous language and languages other than English so we can keep these stories and links to place, to past and to our family histories alive.

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the 30th general conference of UNESCO's proclaimed annual observance of International Mother Language Day on 21 February, and I want to thank the member for Kingsford Smith for bringing this very important day to the attention of this parliament. This year's International Mother Language Day promotes linguistic diversity's contribution to sustainable development. By adopting this as the International Mother Language Day theme for 2018, UNESCO seeks to show that access to education for all is essential for producing sustainable development in the future.

It was three years ago that I moved a similar motion in this chamber, calling on the government to observe this very important day of 21 February, and I did so for a number of reasons that are important to me, my heritage and my community, and to my electorate of Calwell. I note that the number of languages spoken in Australia has since increased, especially in my electorate. In 2015, 418 different languages were spoken in Australia and, according to the 2016 census, 425 different languages—each language spoken by at least one person—are now spoken in Australia. Two hundred and sixty-four different languages are spoken in Victoria; that's more than half the national average. More than half of the state average, 148 different languages, are spoken in my electorate of Calwell.

The 2016 census also revealed that the top 10 languages in order of most spoken, other than English, in my electorate are Arabic, Turkish, Italian, Chaldean Neo-Aramaic, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, Greek, Vietnamese, Punjabi, Sinhalese and Urdu. In Victoria, 69.6 per cent of Chaldean speakers, along with 59.7 per cent of Assyrian speakers, 37.8 per cent of Turkish speakers and 19.8 per cent of Arabic speakers all live in my electorate of Calwell.

Language is one carrier and source of a person's ethnic and cultural identity. It transports across time and through generations to connect families and communities. Being able to speak your language is a fundamental way for our newly arrived migrants and refugees to settle and integrate into their new home. I know from my own experience and the experiences of my constituents that language plays an important part in maintaining cultural inheritance, therefore I can understand the integral role that mother language plays in preserving, for example, the histories and traditions of our Indigenous Australian communities.

Here I want to make mention of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, who are the Indigenous people in my seat of Calwell. Their Indigenous language is a vital link to their culture, their history and their identity. Unfortunately, the rate of people who can speak an Indigenous language is increasingly diminishing. In the most recent National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey, the ABS estimated that 61.8 per cent of people who identified as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander were not able to speak any of their Indigenous languages, and that only 10.5 per cent were actually able to speak one of those Indigenous languages. The culture and traditions of our Indigenous Australians are our collective treasure and our inheritance, and it is our duty to preserve them. I'm afraid to say that we've failed to do that in this country, and I believe that we must do better before they are well and truly extinct. That's why I'd like to join the member for Kingsford Smith in calling on the government to promote the mother language of our Indigenous people—so that important cultural knowledge and cultural expressions are not lost to us and to our broader multicultural community.

Not only this but, given that we live in such a global community, supporting and promoting multilingualism is important for our national growth and our development. Our society is the most diverse it has ever been, and, similarly, the need to communicate with people around the world is more pertinent and more relevant now than it has ever been. With this increased diversity and global connectedness, it is important that our citizens are exposed to a diversity of languages and encouraged to learn a second or a third language.

So I to call on the government to further support second-language instruction in Australian schools right across our country. Second-language instruction in schools helps to remove the prejudices and preconceptions our students may have of the cultural differences of their peers, and it gives all of our students access to the cultural resources of the broader community. There is evidence to suggest that multilingual education improves academic performance across many subject areas. Research on students who are taught multilingual programs at school suggest that learning a language is related to increases in academic results in mathematics, science, social studies and literacy. So it's clear that learning a different language will both aid our future leaders to successfully engage with the international community and foster strong relationships within our own Australian community.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Back in the year 2000, I left Australia on a plane and went to Montreal. I joined about 40 other people from the creative sectors to plan how we might lobby UNESCO to develop an instrument that protected cultural diversity. That instrument eventually came into play, but we did that and we worked on that because we, as creative industries, understood the value of thousands of years of human endeavour, of asking the big questions of life, of living your life and of living together and interacting, and the importance to the world of the language and the culture that grew out of those experiences. When you lose one, you lose something which can never be replaced. In recent years there have been times where the world has lost a language every 14 days. It really is that common that we lose languages.

I was delighted a few years later, as a member of parliament, to meet the Ekushe Academy, meaning 21 in Bangla, which was celebrating International Mother Language Day on 21 February every year. Can I acknowledge in the House today Nirmal Paul and other delegates from Mother Languages Conservation Movement International who have come to Canberra today to hear this motion put to the House by the member for Kingsford Smith and who have worked so hard to promote this incredibly important concept throughout Australia. I worked with them for quite a few years in the early days of the book fairs, when we were first trying to get a monument up in Ashfield, and they have been remarkable in their commitment to the promotion of mother languages.

International Mother Language Day was established in 2000. It's now a source of inspiration for people all around the world to establish their rights of language and culture. The date, 21 February, corresponds to the day in 1952 when students from three different universities were protesting for the recognition of Bangla as one of the two national languages of East Pakistan, essentially protesting for the survival and strength of their language. During the demonstration, four young students were shot dead by police near the Dhaka High Court in the capital of present-day Bangladesh.

There is no doubt that we are richer as a nation for the diverse range of people who call Australia home but carry in their hearts the language of another land. International Mother Language Day is a fantastic opportunity for all of us to celebrate that diversity and the riches that it brings to us as a nation. Language is incredibly special. For those of us who speak only one language, like me, we can miss the complexity of our language, because we don't look at it from the perspective of another. I have people in my community who tell me, at the ages of 17 and 18, that there are things they can say in their mother's language that they can't say in English and there are things they can say in English that they can't say in their parents' language. It means they have a capacity to hold a concept in their hands through language that those of us who are monolingual do not have. It's an incredibly special gift that people who preserve and grow the language of their grandparents in this community bring to this country. I can't imagine not being able to speak the same language as my grandson, who's now three, yet I know people, particularly from the Greek and Italian communities, who didn't teach their children enough of their first language, so we have grandparents who can't speak the same language as their grandchildren. That's a tragedy that we must never let happen again in this country.

The concepts that we miss out on when we don't speak another language are worth commenting on as well. I am going to speak about Bangla here for a moment, because my friends in the Bangla community who talk about that time of fighting talk about some of the great oratory, some of the great speeches of the time, one in particular by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on 7 March 1971, which they tell me was one of the greatest speeches of all time—and one that I'm never really going to grasp, because I will only ever hear it in English. It was made at the Ramna Race Course Maidan in Dhaka to a gathering of over two million people during a period of increasing tension between East Pakistan and the powerful military establishment of West Pakistan. During the speech, he said this:

Our struggle, this time, is a struggle for our freedom, our struggle, this time, is a struggle for our independence. Joy Bangla.

It was in fact a struggle for a people who sought to be who they were, who sought to keep their culture and their language alive so that they could be truly who they are. We now have them in Australia and they're now part of us as well. Happy International Mother Language Day to my Bangla community.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.