Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The success of Poland has been commented on by many people. Since the end of the Cold War, unfortunately for people in Ukraine the national income per capita has remained virtually the same, whereas in Poland it has increased by six per cent. It is an open society. It is an engaging society. Anyone who goes there—and I have been there twice in the last decade—can see all measures of success in that wonderful society. Part of its success is the process of self-realisation and self-analysis over events that happened over the last 100 years but certainly during and since the Second World War.

One of the symbols of success is an organisation called the Forum for Dialogue Among Nations, a non-profit Polish organisation whose mission is to foster Polish-Jewish dialogue, eradicate anti-Semitism and teach tolerance through education. The forum fulfils its missions through seminars, publications, exhibitions and exchange programs targeted at Polish and Jewish youth and leaders throughout the world. This morning I will welcome His Excellency Pawel Milewski, my good friend the Polish ambassador, and Andrzej Folwarczny, the visionary president of the forum for dialogue, who will be here meeting a number of parliamentarians from the Polish-Australia and the Israel-Australia parliamentary friendship groups. Andrzej has a program, which I participated in, that takes people with some kind of leadership role in the Jewish communities in America and Australia and deeply engages them—or reconnects them, I would say—with all levels of Polish society, academic, intellectual and artistic. It is a revelation for all of us. Lost roots, lost connections and lost history are reconnected—a wonderful idea.

Even more impressive is the forum for dialogue's program in Polish high schools, where sometimes the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of people who perished in the Shoah are welcomed back into their village, their town et cetera by the high school students, who, in conjunction with a PhD from Warsaw, Torun or some other place, have investigated the Jewish roots of that particular person, their families and their local communities. Later, the forum for dialogue gathers sometimes 1,000 Polish schools together in Warsaw. Some of the schoolkids have never been to Warsaw. The Polish leadership, including my good friend Bogdan Borusewicz, the chairman of the Polish Senate, commends all of these youngsters on re-establishing Polish history. I commend the forum for dialogue and I congratulate Andrzej Folwarczny on receiving the Order of the Rebirth of Poland for his work in the forum for dialogue.