Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One of the most important and significant communities I'm honoured to represent in this parliament is the community made up of many thousands of Australians who have Vietnamese heritage. Springvale has long been the heartland for Vietnamese Victorians. It's a place that I have lived in and that I have represented at a local government level, and now I have the great privilege of representing Springvale in this federal parliament. More than 20 per cent of the people who live in that suburb alone in my electorate are of Vietnamese heritage. The journey that's brought many of these families to Australia is simply an extraordinary one. Many Vietnamese Australians I represent either themselves or their parents or grandparents fled Vietnam after the civil war. Many were stuck in refugee camps in South-East Asia for years at a time and came to Australia with nothing but the clothes on their back. What this community has achieved in just two generations in our country is incredible, and I feel so humbled to represent people who have been able to make so much of the amazing opportunities that Australia offers. When I go around my community, it literally hums with the life of religious, social and professional activities that are being generated by these amazing people.

This community is supported by a number of incredible local organisations, and I want to talk about some of them. One of those is the South Eastern Melbourne Vietnamese Associations Council, called SEMVAC, which is a council that support all the not-for-profit organisations that support Vietnamese Australians in the region. They make an enormous contribution to social harmony and by providing direct service delivery through an amazing network of volunteers, people of Vietnamese heritage who reach out to people within their community to try to support and assist them. One of the areas where SEMVAC has most recently been most involved is through the vaccination efforts, and the volunteers have done amazing work to ensure that this core part of my community is able to access the vaccine. SEMVAC is led by Loc Lam and a group of amazing committee members and, as I mentioned, this large network of volunteers.

Another organisation I really want to point to is the Springvale Indochinese Mutual Assistance Association, also known as SICMAA, which is an organisation we could not do without in the local area. SICMAA has been servicing the local community for 39 years and it's an organisation that I've had the honour of being associated with for a long time, since I was a councillor in the City of Greater Dandenong. Their president, Be Ha, is a force to be reckoned with. Be is absolutely one of my idols and has led this organisation for a long time. They provide an unbelievable service to the people of the south-east, in particular, of Vietnamese origin.

The Australian Vietnamese Women's Association Springvale is another wonderful organisation headed by their founder, CEO and honorary secretary Cam Nguyen. Cam and her family came to Australia in 1975 as refugees and founded the Vietnamese Friendly Society, which initially provided interpreting services and information about Australia to new Vietnamese refugees. She was honoured this year as the Victorian state recipient of the award for Senior Australian of the Year, which was so well-deserved.

I also want to mention the Vietnamese Australian seniors association and Nancy Skorin, who is a dear friend of mine and a brilliant leader. Overseeing all of these organisations is the Vietnamese Community in Australia Victorian Chapter, which is so well led by Phong Nguyen, and is a hugely dynamic organisation right across Victoria.

I want to note how crucial these organisations are. They provide essential services and support any time in Victoria. However, during the pandemic, the role that these organisations have played has been crucial. We've had a real issue in Victoria getting into communities where English isn't the first language spoken, and these organisations have been an essential in ensuring that correct information has been getting out to Vietnamese families and making sure people understand that the available vaccines are safe and trying to help us bring vaccination rates up for these constituents of mine.

The majority of the Vietnamese Australians who I represent still feel very deep ties back to Vietnam, either because they have friends and family there or through their cultural ties. Something that's constantly raised with me as I move around my electorate is the very serious distress that a lot of Vietnamese Australians feel about the human rights abuses that are taking place in Vietnam at the moment.

I know a lot of Australians have probably visited Vietnam. I'm not sure if they are aware of the staggering differences between the political systems in Vietnam and in Australia. The very basic freedoms that we enjoy as Australians—freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association—are not guaranteed for the people of Vietnam. There isn't an independent media in Vietnam, so the government controls TV, radio, newspapers and other publications, and Vietnamese citizens are not entitled to join organisations, labour unions, political associations or human rights organisations the way that you and I can in Australia. This is not some problem of the past which is slowly resolving over time. Human Rights Watch in their most recent report said, 'Vietnam's human rights record remains dire in all areas.' What we see in so many countries like this is that the people who are persecuted the most are those who are trying to fight the system and speak out for their basic freedoms.

One of the most concerning things about the situation in Vietnam is the unfair imprisonment of a lot of these activists who are fighting for a fairer and more just society in Vietnam. Human Rights Watch found in 2021 alone that authorities prosecuted and imprisoned at least 31 people just for expressing opinions online that were contrary to the government's positions. Pham Doang Trang is one such person—an incredible woman. If you have an interest in this area, I encourage you to google and learn about this amazing woman who has advocated very strongly for the rights of women and for a Vietnamese democracy. She has been imprisoned again recently in Vietnam. She has been horribly violated and left disabled by the security forces but is someone who doesn't turn away because of those things. This is a strength of this activism—someone who is willing to continue to stand up and fight for what she believes in, despite the fact that she knows that she's going to face these kinds of outcomes in Vietnam.

Chau Van Kham's case is one that I know has been raised in the parliament before, because Chau Van Kham is an Australian, an Australian of Vietnamese heritage. He is serving a 12-year prison sentence for simply expressing peaceful political beliefs in Vietnam. He was arrested for, amongst other things, being a member of a political party. Deputy Speaker, can you imagine the freedom that you and I feel to join a political party, to express the beliefs that we are entitled to express in a democracy? In Vietnam, someone doing that basic act can end up in prison for 12 years.

I find the bravery of these activists incredible. It's one thing to see people protesting on the streets in Australia, which they are very much entitled to do, but imagine having the inner strength to do that in a country like Vietnam, where you know that you are going to get hunted down by the authorities and punished for simply stating a point of view. What we know is that the judicial system in Vietnam is not going to ensure free and fair trials for these activists. They get detained and they are put away essentially without proper evidence.

One of the other things I need to mention, which is very disturbing, is the way that the Vietnamese government has restricted religious practices through legislation and different types of surveillance. The Khmer Krom Buddhist Temple and the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam are good examples. These are churches, people expressing religious beliefs, who face more or less constant surveillance and intimidation for exercising this basic human right. In Australia we value those basic human rights. We seek to protect them here in Australia. But what I'm concerned about is the silence on these issues, on what's happening in Vietnam, from the federal government. When faced with these incredibly serious problems in Vietnam, some of which are even affecting Australians who are in Vietnam, what has the Australian government done? Essentially, they've done nothing. That is not good enough. We hear nothing from the government. We don't hear these things being properly condemned. We don't hear the voice of Australians out in the world, making it clear that these things are unacceptable.

I call on the federal government to stand up for human rights. We owe it to our friends in the region. Importantly for me, we owe it to the thousands of people of Vietnamese heritage that I represent for whom these issues are absolutely crucial.