Daniel Mulino (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today, I pay tribute to Cam Nguyen, awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in this year's King's Birthday Honours roll. Cam is President of the Australian Vietnamese Women's Association, an incredibly impactful organisation, with over 350 staff and volunteers who help thousands of clients. Cam founded the AVWA in 1983 while raising a family and working full time. She was the CEO of the organisation for 18 years, steering it through a period of rapid growth. The association now has three offices, supports refugees and migrants and provides a range of services, including education, training, aged care, disability care and home care. The organisation continues to build on its strong legacy of helping the most vulnerable in the community.

Cam arrived in Australia as a refugee from Vietnam in 1975 with her husband and four young children. She has a master's degree in economics from the University of Cambridge and is fluent in English. She felt a moral obligation to use her training and expertise to help her fellow Vietnamese refugees adjust to their new lives. In Australia, Cam taught at the Australian migrant education services, where she played a pivotal role in lobbying the federal government to build an education centre for the large and growing migrant community in the St Albans area in 1990. Cam is serene and gracious and also determined and indefatigable in promoting the AVWA and its important work. She's achieved an incredible amount and continues, to this day, to work hard to build on that. Congratulations on your richly deserved recognition.