Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Multiculturalism isn't just a quaint term for trendy lefties or woke inner-city hipsters. It's a term that describes the reality of modern-day Australia. We are a country with an ancient Indigenous inheritance and a contemporary multicultural society built on waves of migrants who have come here and continue to come here as part of our nation-building enterprise. We can't just, therefore, pay lip service to multiculturalism, because it's about real people, and real people have needs and aspirations. We can't get away with telling or multicultural communities how great we think they are and how much we value their contribution each time we visit their festivals and then come up here and fail to do anything meaningful beyond that.

If we're a successful, cohesive democracy today, it's because previous governments have shown leadership on multicultural policy. They have shown leadership and enacted reform in policy areas around social inclusion, tackling racism and aiding the integration process through the appropriate settlement policies and equal access to citizenship. It hasn't always been the case, however, in recent times. The coalition government in the last seven years had adopted policies that have failed multicultural Australia, especially around citizenship and immigration policies that have created divisions in the community, making people feel alienated, excluded and not welcomed.

The Scanlon Foundation in their 2019 survey indicated to us all that 85 per cent of Australians agree with the proposition that multiculturalism has been good for Australia. Why then can't this government and this Prime Minister adopt and champion what the people of Australia are saying? As a community we've had to step up to fill the void created by lack of government leadership. But it's not enough. Australia needs the leadership of this government to protect the social cohesion of our community.

All you have to do is ask my local community. I know too well the pressure my local Muslim community has been under in the last 18 years—the racist abuse and the taunts they have suffered, their loyalty to Australia questioned. Young Muslim Australians have said to me that they feel as though they have grown up—and indeed they have—in the shadow of Islamic terrorism and they have been stigmatised by it almost for life.

In the last parliament the Joint Standing Committee on Migration conducted an inquiry into migrant settlement outcomes. The government chair chose to try and make the inquiry about African gangs instead, specifically targeting the Sudanese community. The Labor members on this committee issued a dissenting report because we were more concerned about examining the settlement needs of young people and how we can best shape them to assist young people from emerging communities find their way and develop a sense of belonging instead of being marginalised and stigmatised.

In my electorate, I have the largest settlement of refugees from Iraq and Syria, so it's imperative for our settlement services to be directly relevant to their needs. In fact, I've spoken many times in this place about the problems that they are facing in relation to their settlement experience.

Despite what it says, this government has failed in this very critical policy area, time and time again, by responding with programs that just don't work and that are a significant cost to the Australian taxpayer. The Shergold report itself highlights the concerning failure of important programs, such as the Adult Migrant English Program, and jobactive services in supporting social and economic participation. I've got countless examples in my electorate of the effect of this failure.

A highly trained Iraqi facial-reconstruction surgeon who resides in my electorate was sent by jobactive providers to stack shelves in Coles—in the fridge section—much to his dismay. This is just one example. In a room with 500 Iraqi and Syrian constituents, I asked if any one of them had been placed in a job to put up their hand. Not one person put their hand up. If this doesn't concern us I don't know what will. They continue to tell me that the demands of the Adult Migrant English Program are always clashing with the demands of jobactive to attend interviews and to basically get themselves ticked off for jobs that they will never, ever get. There is no flexibility.

The new business model introduced by the government in 2017 for the Adult Migrant English Program was found by the Scanlon Foundation— (Time expired)

See this speech in context