Laura Smyth (La Trobe, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This week is very happily bookended by Harmony Day and St Patrick's Day. As this year is my 30th year in Australia, I have had cause to reflect on what this country has offered to so many Irish and other migrants. I have been able to do so with many other members of the Irish community in Melbourne over the last week. In turn, those migrants, including the Irish, have helped build the social fabric of Melbourne and Australia. In many cases, they have also been key in building physical infrastructure, businesses, our education, health and even political systems.

Australia offered my family a new home in the 1980s. It was at the height of The Troubles in Northern Ireland and the region was riven by internal conflict, violence and prejudice. As I have said before in this place, I am enormously grateful that my parents made the decision to immigrate, as it has given us opportunities that we would not have had in Belfast. But opportunity for migrants cuts both ways. Just as migrants and their families have benefited from the prosperity and living standards of Australia, this country and its citizens by birth have gained enormously from successive waves of migration. I went to school with many first-generation Australian-Italian and Australian-Greek children. Those children have, in many cases, gone on to pursue careers in things like teaching, the public service, business and research, benefiting Australian society enormously. They have had families of their own in many circumstances. Families from, for example, Vietnam who arrived in the 1970s and early 80s will have had a similar experience and new migrants of the last decade will no doubt replicate the very same pattern. At its most basic, our contribution is to our nation's economic prosperity; but our contribution is also to local culture, international cultural and business connections and social cohesion.

Although the circumstances have changed a lot in Belfast, the peace process is something which needs constant vigilance and hard work. It is always a reminder to me about the fragile nature of trust in any society and the corrosive effects of prejudice. It is not enough merely to say that a society is egalitarian or to speak about multiculturalism as though it is something that exists as a settled fact. We can only be an egalitarian multicultural society for as long as we continue to work at it and speak up for it. The Northern Irish experience tells me that it is much easier to tear down a society's sense of trust and social cohesion than to build it up.

I trust that our country will continue to be a place which recognises the tremendous good that has come, and the opportunities which still come, from Irish migration past and present, and the migration of others to our new shores. Organisations like the Casey multifaith group within my own community do very valuable work in promoting cultural and religious awareness and respect in what is a relatively new community. I commend them very much for that very practical work that they do through forums, media and events to promote cultural harmony. I wish all members the best for Harmony Day tomorrow.