Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I've spoken many times in this parliament about the amazing contribution that the diverse African-Australian communities in Melbourne make to the electorate. They help make it one of the best places in the country, if not the world. A little while ago, I joined them, queueing with my kids to get on the train ride at the Eid festival that was organised at Debneys Park. A short time ago, I was at the launch of the new Victoria Police African Employee Network, an amazing initiative that follows some work that the likes of Berhan Ahmed and Yaseen Musa have done in getting the state government to recruit a number of members of the African community to Victoria Police.

If you go to the Carlton public housing estate at 510 Lygon Street on Friday mornings, you will find an incredible market run by the community grocers. It has also been joined by a number of stalls put on by various members of the African-Australian community in Melbourne and Carlton, which are now attracting people from all around the electorate and helping make that place incredibly vibrant. Not that long ago, I joined many other members from the community—indeed, there were members from the council and the Lord Mayor, Sally Capp, and others—at the Africa Day celebrations at Melbourne Town Hall, which was truly an amazing event.

Many of these people came here several generations ago, seeking to make a better life in Melbourne. Many now have been born and bred here. The job of government at all levels should be not only to celebrate their achievements and to recognise the challenges but, in many instances, to get its foot off the throats of the African-Australian communities, because, in too many instances, people in my community are facing racism, bigotry and discrimination, and too often the people whom that comes from includes people in this place. Not only do we need to fight racism wherever it occurs; we need to get government to do the job of addressing the challenges that we face from systemic racism and discrimination in our society.

When you look at the stats, it backs up the stories that people in my electorate tell me every day. The unemployment rate in the Australian-Sudanese community in my electorate is 37 per cent. That is around seven times higher than the national unemployment rate across the country. Across Victoria, that rate is 32 per cent. In the Australia-Eritrean community in Victoria, it's 20 per cent; in Melbourne, it's 24 per cent. An analysis by the ABS found that over 50 per cent of young educated migrants from English-speaking countries were able to find professional level jobs, compared to just 24 per cent of people from non-English-speaking backgrounds. In other words, if you come from a non-English-speaking background, you're more than twice as likely to find yourself in a job where you are not able to use your skills.

We've been trying for a while to get the government to pay attention to this unemployment and underemployment crisis, which in many instances is just the result of racism, and I've heard a number of stories from people who turn up for jobs. I remember speaking to one woman, called Fatma, who told me that she went for an interview for a job as a cleaner and was told, 'No, we can't give you a job as a cleaner because your hijab makes it an OHS issue.' A number of people have told me that after finishing their degree at RMIT or Melbourne university they fire off job application after job application and get no response. But when they change the name on the job application from Mohammed to David, all of a sudden the phone starts ringing.

These are the stories of what is happening to the real people behind these statistics. Government needs to step in with job creation programs, assistance and campaigns to get rid of discrimination. But what we also need in Melbourne is a place especially for young people to gather, because, with unemployment stats like these, you've got to ask yourself: what do you do in Melbourne on a Friday or Saturday night when you are not going to a job and not working? At the moment there's nowhere to go. And there was a chance that the Flemington Community Centre redevelopment could have been that. That's about 100 metres from the border of my electorate. If you know that area, you will know the people who live in North Melbourne and Kensington; the community is very tight there. There was a chance that could have been it. And the local council recently decided to slash funding for that, from $40 million to $20 million, and now there is a question about whether the project is going to go ahead at all. We need a community space for people in Melbourne to meet. We desperately need a space for African-Australian communities and young people that is controlled by them, that is open to them, and where they can meet. If the government is serious about saying it wants to make sure everyone is engaged, then provide the support for a place for people to meet.