Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party, Minister for International Development) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate the member for Moreton on her excellent contribution on this occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Racial Discrimination Act. It is, indeed, an honour to serve with her in this parliament.

As the member for Moreton mentioned, today we mark the 50th anniversary of the RDA, or the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. It was the first law to recognise and protect the right of everyone in Australia to be free from discrimination based on race. Fifty years on, Australians take great pride in our free and democratic country, where all of us have the right to live without fear of discrimination and free from acts of intimidation and violence on the basis of race, ethnicity or cultural heritage. Modern Australia is a migrant nation. It is who we are. The Racial Discrimination Act underscores and protects this vital part of this proud nation. Our multicultural success belongs to all Australians, every single one of them, no matter where you came from, no matter where your parents came from and no matter how you came to be here. Half of all Australians were born overseas or have a parent who was born overseas.

My story is one of those stories. I'm an Australian, but I'm also a migrant. At the age of two, my family chose Australia, settling in the Western Suburbs of Sydney. We quickly became a part of our local community. We had neighbours from Britain and New Zealand, but also from China, Greece and the former Yugoslavia. My Australia is defined by my childhood, in the suburbs where we would gather under the hot sun to play a game of legendary Aussie driveway cricket. We improvised wickets out of garbage cans, pausing only intermittently to move the wicket to allow cars to pass by. There we played for hours under the hot sun, on the hot tarmac, interrupted only by the cry of parents standing on the front porch letting us know that it was time to come inside for dinner. And as each child's name was called out into the dusky sky, a different accent could be made out—Greek, Italian, English, Irish, Indian, Swedish, Chinese, Arabic, Australian. Nobody made fun of each other's strange names or the funny way our mothers or fathers would call out for us.

Under this 48th Parliament, our House of Representatives is the most diverse it has been in the history of this nation—and it is richer because of it. At the 2025 election, Australians across the nation voted overwhelmingly for a parliament that looked like the community it represents. A study by the Scanlon Foundation earlier this month found that 83 per cent of Australians think that multiculturalism is good for our country, and they're right. The Albanese Labor government unequivocally stands for multiculturalism reflecting our national identity.

I am honoured to be appointed as the first standalone cabinet Minister for Multicultural Affairs.

Honourable members: Hear, hear!

An honourable member: You're a fantastic minister, too.

Thank you to my colleagues for their interjections there.

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