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

I want to welcome the government's announcement yesterday that Australia will accept 12,000 refugees fleeing the turmoil and violence in the Middle East. I do so particularly because my electorate is already home to many earlier waves of refugees from this region and, as a result of family and community ties, I expect that the federal seat of Calwell will be one of those areas preferred as a new home and settlement for a good many of the new refugees that are about to join us.

I have been engaged with Syrian and Iraqi communities in my electorate for many years. I genuinely understand—and I want to convey to this place—the anguish that has been experienced by so many who still have family members trapped in the conflict zones or trapped in temporary refuge countries such as Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. My office receives visits and phone calls from my constituents almost on a daily basis, desperate to bring families here to Australia—to the safety of Australia. Therefore the news that some of these loved ones just may be amongst those that Australia now accepts will bring great relief to many of my local residents.

I also welcome the fact that the intake announced yesterday will be non-discriminatory. We must always remember that what matters is the plight that people find themselves in, and not their religion or their ethnicity. My electorate is home to a large number of Chaldeans, Syriacs and Assyrians, and Coptic Christians, to name but a few. But we need to remember that in my electorate I have a very large number of constituents who are of the Muslim faith, and many of them are amongst those who are victims of persecution and violence. Everyone who is in need of safety deserves our compassion, our assistance and our welcome to a new home.

There may be many Australians who are less than enthusiastic about accepting this new 12,000 intake, with this new wave of refugees. But I ask them to consider our nation's long and proud history as one of constant migration, by both those seeking a new life by choice and those forced to flee persecution. Many of the victims of the current conflict across the Middle East are highly skilled, well-educated people. We know that initially they will need our support and help to recover from dislocation and trauma to re-establish new lives, learn a new language and find their feet. We also know that this help should be understood as an investment in our community and in our nation. I am confident that these refugees, like so many migrants before them, will very soon repay this investment by working hard, building new lives and using their considerable skills and resourcefulness to contribute to Australian society. In my electorate alone, refugees and migrants who have come from war and conflict and persecution have already enriched the community in which they now live. Even within the first generation they have built new careers, started businesses, trained and retrained, and many of their children are doing very well at school, completing tertiary education and moving into leadership roles.