Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This week, hundreds of thousands of Australians will be celebrating the ancient festival of Diwali, also known as the 'festival of lights'. In India and throughout the world, the Indian diaspora will be preparing to celebrate with friends and family with lights, fireworks, musical performances, henna paintings and all kinds of magnificent food. For anyone that has not attended a celebration, the festival of lights is a fantastic experience, one that is celebrated differently by different communities, but always with an emphasis on the awareness of the inner light.

Thanks to a decade of strong migration to Australia from India, Diwali is here to stay as a celebration across our cities and suburbs. This celebration is just one of many examples of the growing person-to-person connections between Australia and India and the growing prominence of the Indian-Australian community. Australia and India have always had a good relationship, but in recent years our ties have grown even stronger. Between 2007 and 2011, over 13 per cent of Australia's migrants were from India alone and today there are well over 400,000 people of Indian origin living in Australia, with Hinduism our fastest growing religion.

Last year Narendra Modi became the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Australia in 28 years, whipping up a storm of excitement in the community unlike any other we have seen for a state visit before. This year also marked the inaugural Australia-India Leadership Dialogue, an important forum, which will no doubt grow in significance over time, designed to bring together government officials, senior politicians and business people from both countries to deepen engagement and develop connections.

Indian cultural and religious festivals fill my calendar, as an MP with a large Indian-Australian community. Last week, I attended the Floral Festival with the Melbourne Telangana Forum, and just before that I attended the Navratri with Yuva Gujarat in Altona North, where thousands of local residents celebrated and danced the garba well into the night.

I have been to more Diwali and Holi celebrations than I could count. These events are a testament to Australia's multiculturalism—a model of multiculturalism where we all come together as equal Australians with a shared belief in the liberal-democratic ideals that we live under here, but also celebrating the different cultural heritages that we bring to this nation. As former Premier of Victoria Steve Bracks was known to say, 'There is nothing more Australian than being a migrant.'

Melbourne's west is the fastest growing region in Australia and a lot of that growth comes from the emerging Indian-Australian community. But Australian multiculturalism only works because we work at it. On the government side, this means working to ensure that newly arrived Australians are given the support they need to become fully equal, economic and political citizens in our nation. Two weeks ago I joined community leaders at the Australian Foundation of Non-Resident Indians with the Indian Consulate to hear about the issues affecting newly arrived Indian-Australians and their communities. Just as politicians want to attend festivities and celebrate with the Indian-Australian community during the good times, it is essential that we are available to listen to the issues confronted by a new community and the problems of transition that arise, and then to work on them together.

One of the challenges that were raised at this forum was a lack of understanding around cultural norms and traditional practices in Indian culture. Our multicultural society necessitates that we engage with emerging cultures in a spirit of tolerance and respect—it is a key element of Australia's multicultural success story. Of course, one of these is religious tolerance and respect. This year I have been sent a series of images of a Sydney-based brewing company that is selling ginger beer with the Hindu deities Ganesha and Laxmi on its label, or an approximation of these deities.

To those who do not understand the significance of these images, this may seem light-hearted and a bit of fun graphic design, but anyone who listens to the Australian-Indian community will soon appreciate that the use of these images in this way is deeply offensive to Hindus, Sikhs and people from South Asia more broadly. The offence is particularly acute given that ginger beer does contain a proportion of alcoholic content. There is no law against this but I call on all Australians to show tolerance and respect for our fellow Australian citizens in the diverse multicultural society we live in, to treat others in the way we would expect to be treated. The use of these sacred representations in this way might not mean much to you or to someone from a non-Indian background but it means a great deal to many members of the Australian-Indian community.

It is our responsibility as members of this shared society to stand up for these emerging communities and to try to understand cultures other than our own and ultimately to show respect. It is up to every one of us to play our part in empowering our emerging communities. I will be doing my bit in January next year when I travel to India to be a part of the Australia-India Youth Dialogue. In this week of Diwali, I wish the Indian-Australian community a prosperous year ahead. I look forward to sharing many more prosperous years to come as members of a successful multicultural community.