Stirling Griff (SA, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Hansard source

In 2016, Deng Adut was named NSW Australian of the Year. He delivered an address at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music about freedom from fear. He said:

To appreciate the value of freedom one must first be denied it. To know real fear gives special meaning and yearning to being free of fear.

Deng went on to share what freedom of fear meant to him in the context of his own story, emphasising how very lucky we are to enjoy freedom from fear and how very unlucky many others are who neither choose nor deserve their fate.

He spoke of his memories as a child soldier, of losing the right to be innocent and to be a child, of memories of the deadened face and gaunt and skeletal body of one of his nephews lying on a cornsack, of watching other boys his age abused and killed, of being abused himself and, perhaps worst of all, of experiencing what it was like to be expected to kill or be killed. He spoke of being denied the right to become an initiated member of his tribe and how difficult it was having someone so special taken away from him. Finally, Deng spoke of his gratitude to Australia for opening the doors not only to him but also to all other migrants like him. He said:

Without your spirit of a fair go, my story could not have been told.

It was this opportunity that finally made him feel that he belonged—the mark of inclusiveness he had yearned for all of his life.

Deng's story is one of many hundreds of thousands that I could highlight tonight. I chose his because it epitomises all that we stand to lose if we cave in to the fearmongering and dog whistles that seem to have become all too common in this place. Much of this dog whistling appears to be seeping into this government's political agenda. In recent times, we have seen a shift in migration policy that doesn't sit comfortably with many of us. Right now, we are considering changes to our citizenship laws that will alter everything we know about becoming an Australian. The impacts of some of these changes are so far-reaching that it beggars belief. If you scratch beneath the surface, you'll see that the proposed changes have very little to do with integration or even national security and everything to do with instilling fear.

The bill targets people from non-English backgrounds and particularly targets vulnerable people. It ignores everything we know about the protections these people ought to have and says to them, 'You aren't good enough, literate enough, smart enough, hardworking enough or'—maybe even by inference—'white enough to be an Australian.' It says to those people, 'We don't trust you, and we don't want you to live in Australia.' It instils fear and it foments hate. It targets families and children as if in an attempt to wear them down to ultimate defeat. Personally, I think the majority of Australians are fair-minded and would not support these changes. I believe the majority of Australians have no problem with our current citizenship laws, regardless of their views on other migration issues, such as offshore detention. The government is, in effect, trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist in the first place.

In some ways, the proposed citizenship changes don't come as a surprise to me. They are certainly in keeping with the minister's comments last year, when he expressed concerns over refugees not being literate in their own language, let alone English, suggesting that they were a threat to Australian jobs and only likely to end up languishing on unemployment queues. They are also in keeping with last week's move by the government to cease payments and accommodation for refugees in Australia for medical treatment, in an effort to drive them out of Australia. It's mean and it's ugly, and because of it we stand to lose people like Deng—someone who is living proof of what the human spirit can help a kid achieve, if given half a chance.

We stand to lose people like His Excellency Hieu Van Le, the Governor of my home state of South Australia, who arrived here by boat as a refugee in 1977 after fleeing from the communist regime in Vietnam. We stand to lose people like author, actor, comedian and artist Anh Do, who fled to Australia with his family, also by boat, from Vietnam in 1980. We stand to lose people like the great late Les Murray, who couldn't speak a word of English when he and his family were forced to flee from their homeland, Hungary, in 1956, following the Soviet invasion. Les was just 11 when he arrived in Australia. He went on to become one of Australia's most recognised and loved sporting identities. He also became a fierce advocate of tolerant policies towards asylum seekers and refugees. In 2009, when he was presented with the lifetime achievement award for contribution to sports journalism at the Australian Sports Commission Media Awards, Les said:

That I, who came here as a penniless child refugee over 50 years ago, should receive such an award says a lot about this country and about what a welcoming, open and receptive society we are.

If the proposed citizenship changes are implemented, we stand to lose tens of thousands of people who didn't come here as refugees but for whom citizenship could now be out of reach because they will never be able to meet the proposed English language test. Indeed, many of us wouldn't even be here today if our parents or grandparents or great-grandparents were required to meet the government's proposed changes. I certainly know mine wouldn't have—they fled from Russian pogroms in 1900 and came to Australia with limited English language skills but a tremendous desire to make a new life in Australia and contribute to our fantastic social fabric.

Australia has very much been enriched by having people like Deng, His Excellency Hieu Van Le, Anh Do, Les Murray and the many other migrants that arrived before and after them. Indeed, Australia is a nation built by migrants. Since free settlement began, settlers have travelled across oceans, all in search of a better life—from the Chinese traders and the Afghan cameleers of the gold rush era to the migrants of the early 1900s and then the 1950s and 1960s; from the Vietnamese boat people of the 1970s to the Indochinese and Middle Eastern asylum seekers of the late 1990s; and from the African refugee intake of the early 2000s to asylum seekers as we know them today and everyone else in between. Close to 10 million people have, either through choice or desperation, arrived on Australian shores, by boat and by plane, in search of a new and definitely better life.

Of all the English-speaking nations, Australia is the most multicultural, thanks to those 10 million British, European, Asian, African, Middle Eastern, American and New Zealand-born people. We are a melting pot of different races, languages, cultures and religions. We've gained a reputation for our approach to multiculturalism that is the envy of other nations. That is why the current direction of our citizenship policy beggars belief. It is an affront to all of those people who came here and forged ahead to make a life for themselves and their families, who embraced our way of life and enriched our society by sharing with us their own cultural values and beliefs. What the government is trying to do is nothing short of un-Australian. It undermines the very fabric of our society—a society that has been enriched and strengthened by migration.

Senate adjourned at 22:15