Dai Le (Fowler, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I speak on this issue not as a member of parliament but as someone whose life story was shaped by war. As people know, my family fled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon. We were civilians caught in a conflict we did not start and could not control. Australia could have chosen to close its door, but under the former prime minister Malcolm Fraser, this country made a decision that changed the lives of thousands of families like mine.

Australia chose compassion. Because of that decision, a refugee child who arrived here with nothing now stands in this parliament representing her community. That history matters. It reminds us that migration policy is not about systems and powers; it's about human lives. So, when we talk about our migration policy, know that behind the numbers and the policies we talk about are the individuals and the civilians who actually are the most impacted by the wars that are happening across the world.

I could quote the amazing poet, Paul Valery, who talks about war as 'a massacre of people who don't know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don't massacre each other'. As people who make decisions and policies that impact the lives of civilians out there, we need to be careful when it comes to war. If we are going to participate in any wars, we have to be ready to take up the responsibility and deal with the consequences.

And one of the consequences of that is people movement. There will be refugees. There will be people seeking safe haven, because these people, like my family, have no control over the war. We had no control over the decisions made by the government of the day to get into war, so we had to flee. When we fled, we needed a place of safe haven. Australia provided us with safe haven. We cannot now, sitting in here and seeing the wars happening, not step up and say: 'We participated in that war in some capacity. We must provide a safe haven for those people'—because, by God, there will be refugees seeking asylum to this safe haven—'because we are part of that war.'

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