Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Australians have been troubled recently. They have been troubled by the news they have been seeing on their TVs at night. Events at home and events around the world have led many to wonder about the type of world we are living in at the moment. In times of trouble, the most important question we can ask ourselves is: are we stronger together? And what can we do to make our nation stronger together? We have seen stories of Australians who, inexplicably to most of us, have gone overseas to fight. Just as inexplicably to me, we have seen stories of Australians graffitiing mosques, pulling the head scarves off girls, threatening school children. One man is alleged to have gone into a Muslim school and threatened children at that school with a knife. And we had Jewish kids in Sydney threatened on a bus. Sikh taxi drivers—because some people are too dumb to tell the difference—have been threatened when they have been driving their taxis. I have to say that these two problems—the problem of radicalisation and the problem of racism—are two sides of the one coin. As Australians we have to reject both of them outright. Neither of these represents the Australia that we are part of.

A few years ago I was at the Royal National Park with my mum and dad and my kids. My dad told a guy not to get too close to the ducklings, because he would disturb them. This man said to my father, 'You should go back where you came from'—after 65 years living in Australia, paying his taxes and raising his kids to be kids to be good citizens. The shock of it was not the stupid racism. The shock of it was being told that he did not belong, after 65 years in this country. We cannot afford to say to any Australian now, 'You do not belong.' Our responsibility is to show our strength by embracing diversity, embracing difference and speaking to all of our communities about what makes Australia stronger.

One of the best things about being a federal member of parliament—one of the things I enjoy the very most—is going to citizenship ceremonies, because at those citizenship ceremonies we meet people who have chosen Australia as their home. They have chosen to become part of our national family. At each of those ceremonies we say our pledge:

I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey.

There is no more elegant or eloquent expression of our Australian values: our values of democracy, of human rights, liberties and the rule of law. I have said it before: I think Australian school kids should learn this pledge, because it is such an elegant and eloquent description of what it is to be Australian.

This year, Vietnamese refugee Hieu Van Le became the new Governor of South Australia. He said that he remembers experiencing racism when he was a young fellow, but then it really melted away—until, he said, Pauline Hanson made that maiden speech in this parliament. This is my plea to members here today: remember our particular, special responsibility as leaders to say clearly in the Australian community that we value difference, we embrace diversity. What makes us different makes us stronger. There were 20 nationalities represented at the Eureka Stockade—that birth of Australian nationalism—where those people fought together and stood up for a fair go for other Australians. I think of that as one of the seminal moments in our history, but it was people from many nations coming together to say about their new home: 'these are the values we live by. This is the way we expect to treat one another. This is what it is to be part of the new Australia.;

Our leadership matters and our words matter. It is our responsibility to say, again and again—in the face of division, in the face of divisiveness—that we are stronger together.

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