Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We all love to talk about the things that make our communities and electorates distinct. You represent the national capital, a beautiful place—with terrible mobile phone reception, as we know. The thing that distinguishes my community in south-east Melbourne though is the human diversity. The cities of Greater Dandenong and Casey are some of the most multicultural places in the country. Greater Dandenong is the most multicultural place. There are people from more than 150 countries speaking more than 200 languages, with more than 100 different faith groups, every day.

We are rich with that human diversity but we are also globally connected, and daily life isn't just local. People are constantly connected to all parts of the globe, every corner of the world, every day, every hour of every day, on WhatsApp, Facebook, FaceTime, Signal, Zoom, Teams meetings, staying in touch in every time zone with family, friends, loved ones, doing business. So my electorate office is an outlier.

It's a little bit weird when I talk to my colleagues. The biggest issue is not Centrelink, it's not the tax office, it's not the NDIS, it's not the NBN, it's not emergency relief, it's not Medicare. Eighty or 90 per cent of the stuff that comes through my front door, that my staff deal with, is cleaning up the shocking mess of nearly one million visa and citizenship applications that this mob, to their eternal shame, left behind.

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