Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to record my appreciation of the South Asian Public Affairs Council for their literary evening on Saturday night. It's a beautiful annual community event—the third time I've attended—where people come and read and reflect on poetry in their first languages. We heard poetry in all sorts of languages—Hindi, Tamil, Sinhalese, Punjabi, Urdu, Pashto, Bengali and many more. Most people author their poetry; some find one that they like. I congratulate SAPAC, a non-profit organisation devoted to preserving and promoting South Asian culture, and their hardworking executive—their president, Bandu Dissanayake; their vice-presidents, Dr Kaushal Srivastav and Dr Sharif As-saber; the treasurer, Dr Noel Nadesan; the secretary, Kaushaliya Vaghela; and the executive members, Dr M Shahbaz Chaudhry, Neeraj Nanda, Dr Mo Jamal, Dilkie Perera, Manoj Kumar, Aloke Kumar and Dor Aschna. They are a hardworking executive, and it's one of many community events.

I also assured them that Labor would stand with them, yet again, and stand with multicultural Australia in opposing, yet again, the government's racist bill to try and introduce an English language test, a university grammar English language test, to become an Australian citizen. People in that room are doctors, lawyers or heart surgeons or own businesses, and they would not pass that grammar test. What the government is saying to them is, 'You're not the kind of people we want in Australia.' We don't agree with that. We think conversational English has served this country well and can do so in the future. We oppose, yet again, this bill.