Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to pay tribute to the Multicultural Youth Advocacy Network, which is an organisation located in Sydney Olympic Park inside my electorate. They are a wonderful organisation that do great work all year round. However, on Friday they had their first ever FUSE summit, 'FUSE' not being an acronym but meaning 'fuse'—bring together. They brought multicultural youth from right around Australia to Sydney Olympic Park to the GWS Learning Life Centre. I would like to thank GWS for making their facility available, which I know that Multicultural Youth Advocacy Network, MYAN, is going to take more advantage of.

The three-day summit was a wonderful opportunity. I speak in this place a lot about multiculturalism, and I have been blessed to grow up in a multicultural area, but a lot of different parts of Australia have become multicultural of late. Whilst what we take for granted in Reid—the networks of support and advocacy—are well-founded and well-functioning, in other parts of Australia that is not the case.

MYAN had the vision to bring together our youth, the next generation of leaders, from right around Australia to spend three days talking about what we do in Western Sydney and ways that these young people could become advocates. It was a train-the-trainer, I guess, where they could go back to their different parts of Australia—and there were people from every state and territory there—and start advocating and working on setting up the migrant infrastructure that I know the member for Greenway and I have the benefit of leaning on when we need to and that the community, more importantly, have the benefit of leaning on.

I joined a panel with Senator the Hon. Concetta Fierravanti-Wells; the Hon. Matt Kean, who is the state parliamentary secretary to Dominello, the Minister for Citizenship and Communities; Megan Mitchell, the National Children's Commissioner; and me. We were given five presentations and at the end of each presentation there was a question-and-answer session. Topics included things like education and employment for multicultural youth; ESL teaching—something I spoke about in my maiden speech—and the need to do it better as the core building block on which we can build; perceptions in the media, obviously very topical at the moment; being inclusive as a society, once again very topical; and, lastly, asylum seekers, once again very topical.

It was refreshing to see such a great gathering of such great people, our youth. They are the hope of the side—I say that so often. They do not look at each other and identify by race, skin colour or religion. They just see fellow Australians. In the opening words of a song which was written in 1987 to reflect on our past but is just as relevant today and, I hope, reflects so strongly our future:

We are one

But we are many

And from all the lands on Earth we come

I looked around the room. It was no different to what Michelle and I see daily in our electorates—something we take for granted. I hope that the passion in that room spreads like a flame across all the different parts represented in that room and that different societies that do not have the background we have can come to know it better. Well done, to MYAN and the GWS Giants.

I would like to talk about an event, called Walk Together, I attended with the member for Greenway and the member for Blaxland on Saturday afternoon. I congratulate Brad Chilcott and his team at Welcome to Australia. We marched for a harmonious and inclusive Australia. It is a common theme and very topical, with what we confront right now on the world stage and the implications that has for our local communities. I was particularly pleased to see a team from St Patrick's College at Strathfield. It is my old school and that of the member for Watson. My father went to the school also. It is a school that is run by Christian Brothers, and where there are Christian Brothers there is Catholic social justice. As someone who was raised by them it was so refreshing to see that, one generation on, the Christian Brothers, who have been instilling social justice since the early 1800s, are still doing such a wonderful job. It was a real thrill to walk down George Street. I have only ever had the opportunity to cross George Street; I have never had the chance to have traffic stop and walk down it. There would have been a crowd of 1,000 walking. The walk ended at Darling Harbour, where we listened to a great variety of speakers passing on the message 'Welcome to Australia'. I say a lot that this is a country that has been and will be built on the back of migration. We should not falter at this stage in our country's history because of events halfway around the world which scare all of us, irrespective of where we come from or what we believe. Well done, to Brad and all his team.

I had the opportunity on Saturday night to join my local Hindu community at Diwali, the festival of lights. The Sri Mandir temple in Auburn is Australia's first. I was invited to spend some time with the community. Diwali is a festival that celebrates the triumph of good over evil, of light over darkness. I had the wonderful opportunity to speak to a large gathering of people, to say how fitting it was—although I am not Hindu; I gave away earlier that I am Catholic—how topical that theory is. I spoke about world events at the moment and about how pleasing it was to be celebrating the triumph of good over evil. I got a rousing reception. There was great camaraderie from Dr Rajeev Spada and all of the board, who put in time and time again at the temple. It was a precursor of what I often refer to as migrant infrastructure of the spiritual kind. The temple was build in the 1970s and has grown into something fantastic. Traffic arrangements did have their moments, but they run such a great show. There was a feed afterwards, great hospitality and great camaraderie. To all at the Sri Mandir temple, thank you, once again—I have been there many times—for making me so welcome.

I had the chance on Saturday morning to catch up with the recently convened Navy cadet unit based at Lidcombe depot. I joined the Royal Australian Navy Strategic Adviser on Islamic Cultural Affairs, Captain Mona Shindy, and the Chief of Navy, Vice Admiral Tim Barrett. This is a Navy cadet unit with a difference. Its members are Muslim. It is a great initiative from the Australian Navy.

We were there to launch a boat that was being donated by a generous benefactor and the Navy, and the Navy had the foresight to invite Sheikh Douish to christen the boat. He spoke that day with some 40 or 50 young boys and girls standing in front of him, some of them related to him; they were his grandchildren. He is a wonderful man. He spoke of the irony that, at a time when—he is a great moderate leader—he stands in his mosque and instils in his congregation the importance of being Australian and paying homage to your homeland, he was standing and talking to 50 or 60 young boys and girls who wanted to one day joint he Navy. They were starting their career with the hopes of one day standing in the front lines and defending this country, their country, our country. This 'us and them' just has to stop. When Sheikh Douish said this—and I get it because I battle to say it myself—he cracked up. He broke down. He cried. That made it even more powerful. It shows you strain that these communities are under. It shows you the strain that my friends and my neighbours are under. The preachers, the people who talk to their congregations on a daily basis, the people the congregation come to with stories of abuse—one mentioned in the main chamber today a girl in a hijab being pushed over and breaking her arm.

When you meet people like Sheikh Douish, when you see the next generation of Australians of Islamic background and all they want to do is be a member of the Australian Navy, it gives you a shot in the arm. My only drama is that I hope to get the media interested in this story because these are the stories that we need to tell. These are the stories that bring us together. We have too much discussion about things that divide us, not enough about things that bring us together.

It was an honour to join the Australian Navy cadets. Thank you to Chief of Navy Tim Barrett, all involved and, most importantly, the boys and girls, great young Australians, who will make a big difference.

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