Dai Le (Fowler, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move the following motion championing Australia's multicultural strength:

That this House:

(1) acknowledges:

(a) more than half of the Australian population was either born overseas or has one parent who was born overseas; and

(b) nearly a quarter of Australian residents speak a language other than English at home;

(2) notes:

(a) the importance of government in creating an inclusive society where everyone feels they belong;

(b) the importance of national broadcasters like SBS and ABC in reflecting and engaging with culturally and linguistically diverse and Indigenous communities and promoting social cohesion and inclusion; and

(c) perceptions of fair and adequate representation in the media directly correlates with multicultural communities' sense of belonging;

(3) encourages:

(a) policymakers and government bodies to engage with culturally diverse communities in policy development;

(b) the Australian Public Service to commit to ensuring that diversity of leadership representation is reflected across its leadership levels;

(c) media organisations to ensure staff, senior leadership and boards reflect Australia's rich diversity; and

(d) SBS to play an active role in ensuring talent from multicultural backgrounds is given opportunities to excel within the organisation; and

(4) calls on the Government to:

(a) take into account multicultural communities and their needs when formulating policies, allocation of funding, and resources;

(b) ensure English classes are funded for newly arrived migrants and refugees to ensure their successful integration into Australian society;

(c) ensure newly settled migrants and arrivals are aware of their rights and responsibilities;

(d) improve the process to recognise overseas qualifications so migrants and refugees can contribute to Australia's skilled workforce;

(e) effectively consult with cultural communities to inform the Government's Multicultural Framework Review.

Our country, and the world, faces social, political and economic turbulence following the pandemic. The Scanlon Foundation's 2022 social cohesion study found that while social cohesion increased in Australia during this period, it is now declining as we adjust to life after this turbulent time. But the study also found that, population wide, our nation's support for multiculturalism is high and growing, with 78 per cent believing that migrants make Australia stronger, up from 63 per cent in 2018. That's why I am putting forward this important motion, as I believe this House has a critical role to play to ensure that the policies, the conversations and the decisions we make from Canberra champion our cohesive Australian multicultural community and identity.

We know that more than half of the Australian population was born overseas or has one parent born overseas. In my electorate of Fowler, the multicultural heartland of Australia, 70 per cent of my community speak a language other than English. That brings me to the role that the Special Broadcasting Service plays in encouraging and highlighting how multicultural Australia is now a fact of life in our society. Representation is critical. My life before being elected as member for Fowler was as a journalist and reporter for, firstly, Fairfax community newspapers then later with the ABC. I was the only Asian face in the newsroom. During the nineties, while reporting on local issues, my community was demonised and ostracised across all media outlets, even by our elected politicians. Had there been representation from people with lived expense of this community, it would not have ignited the flames of division that we felt at the time.

Studies by the University of Canberra and SBS have shown that how multicultural communities are represented in the media affects their sense of belonging. The Scanlon Foundation found that Australians' sense of belonging has declined from a score of 100 in 2007 to 81 in 2022. Belonging is a key element in creating a social, cohesive society. Further research from Media Diversity Australia also found that while diverse representation has improved on our screens and airwaves, there is still some way to go. The Who gets to tell Australian stories? report found that while public service broadcasters have improved representation in on-screen talent or in their stories told, commercial networks still severely underrepresented CALD communities in their broadcasting. Furthermore, in the newsroom and boardrooms themselves, leadership is also lacking in cultural diversity. With this, I'm proud to launch the Parliamentary Friends of SBS alongside my colleagues the member for Monash and the member for Calwell. As a public broadcaster, SBS has serviced Australians for approximately 45 years, covering stories in multilingual and multicultural media forms. I commend SBS for its commitment to ensuring that everybody's voice is captured and included. A young constituent shared with me how she grew watching her father tuning into the Vietnamese segment of SBS to learn about what was happening around the world. This experience shows that multiculturalism in the media is a powerful tool that can travel through generations.

Yes, diversity in the arts, culture and media is important, but so is representation in what we do as policy-makers. Media and politics go hand in hand. The media will report on the government policies and, therefore, the government, at the end of the day, is ultimately responsible for formulating policies to enable a cohesive, multicultural Australia. It is very exciting to see this parliament being one of the most culturally and gender diverse, but we are yet to see how this will translate into leadership roles, decision-making and policies that will benefit communities we represent and the cultural diversity within them. Australia will continue to be more diverse as time progresses, so I ask government institutions to ensure multicultural communities are included and are on their minds when formulating policies. This will eventually be reflected in mainstream media through the stories we see and in mainstream institutions at leadership levels, where lived experiences, cultural knowledge and diverse perspectives will enable better policy outcomes and decision-making that will make Australia a stronger and more cohesive nation.

As we sit in the prestige of this parliament, I am reminded that our voices are a powerful tool to ensure that the policies we deliver are reflective of Australian multicultural society.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Russell Broadbent (Monash, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and I reserve my right to speak.

Anne Stanley (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia has had a long and complex past, and while we have many things to be proud of, there are moments in our history that we must reflect deeply on. One such point of reflection is our history of the White Australia Policy, which is less a single point in time than a long-running period in our history of discrimination against those of non-European ethnic origin who sought to migrate to Australia. It is not until the major steps taken by the Holt government in 1966 that the task of dismantling this policy began. After three attempts, the Whitlam government passed the Racial Discrimination Act in 1975, ushering in a legal end to the White Australia Policy.

These moments and periods in our history are not that long ago. Many of us in this House lived in an Australia where racial discrimination was legal. Today we stand in a very different Australia that could not be more strongly contrasted with those periods. We stand in an Australia that acknowledges our past wrongs and builds towards a better and more inclusive future, one that values and encourages migration and multiculturalism. Australia has one of the highest rates of immigration in the Western world, with immigrants accounting for up to 30 per cent of our population, and in my community that number is even higher. I am proud to represent one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse communities not just in Sydney but also in Australia—68.3 per cent of my community have both parents born overseas, with 49.4 per cent of people born overseas themselves, and 66 per cent of households use a language other than English at home. These facts are what define our identity in the south-west of Sydney.

A proud moment as a representative for my community was being part of Labor's Multicultural Engagement Taskforce throughout 2020. We set out to understand and engage with multicultural communities across Australia, welcoming submissions from individuals and groups. We heard that CALD communities were often unaware of government services, and that when they were they faced additional barriers that made access more difficult. That was across all services, from the NDIS and aged care to business support. We heard that CALD communities were feeling the effects of rising right-wing extremism and racism. Since coming to office, the Albanese government has taken a proactive role in ensuring that CALD communities do not feel left behind and do feel as if they belong.

From the renewed focus on repairing and strengthening our international relationships to initiatives to support CALD communities in Australia, the May budget included measures such as $2.5 million to support multicultural media literacy, more than $15 million to help multicultural communities access primary care services through the establishment of a PHN multicultural access program and also $5 million to boost COVID-19 vaccination rates in multicultural communities. These are in addition to the measures in the October budget, which included $20 million to increase the Adult Migrant English Program, which will help accessibility to English learning, almost $13 million for a two-year pilot program to assist temporary visa holders experiencing domestic violence and $7.5 million over four years for the Australian Human Rights Commission to develop a national antiracism strategy. This is just to name a few.

The next step in ensuring a more inclusive and fairer Australia will be the Albanese government's Multicultural Framework Review. It will ensure that government policy and institutional arrangements are fit for a modern, dynamic and multicultural Australia. The review will be guided by three principles: advancing a multicultural Australia, supporting our cohesive and inclusive multicultural society, and ensuring settings that are fit for the purpose of harnessing the talents of all Australians. Listening was the foundation of Labor's Multicultural Engagement Taskforce in 2020, and it is the principle that underpins this review. There will be extensive consultation with key community groups who reflect diverse views and backgrounds; experts; Commonwealth, state and territory government agencies; as well as members of the public. That is what will ensure government services and policies are in line with the needs of my community and multicultural communities throughout Australia.

Multiculturalism is what defines Australia, and the Albanese Labor government has demonstrated that we will continue to build and strengthen our success as a diverse community.

Russell Broadbent (Monash, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased that this motion has come before the House. In 2004, when I returned to this House for the third time, after being defeated twice and being a oncer twice, I found a place that had changed. I grew up in a multicultural community. It was just natural for all of us—half of our community were migrants from Europe; farmers, great industrious people—to celebrate it. But around that time, starting with the New South Wales Labor government, the ministerial role of minister for multiculturalism was dropped. That then spread like wildfire across state governments and eventually to the federal government, where we didn't have a minister for multiculturalism. This gave me the feeling that I didn't believe that my multicultural community that I so celebrated, especially the Italian community—and all my friends and all the people that I grew up with were these people—had been recognised and celebrated in the way that they should be.

Since then we have had waves of different nationalities come through this nation, including numbers of Vietnamese who came here under the then Liberal government. Were there difficulties? Of course there were, but none were much that you would wipe the word 'multiculturalism' from your everyday language. So I needed a partner of crime, and I found Maria Vamvakinou. Maria is of Greek background. Totally opposite to me, she's in the Labor Party—I was in the Liberal Party. But what we had in common was a love for our multicultural communities and the fact that, at that time, they were diminished by governments not recognising their important contribution.

On visiting a number of communities, we found that they felt that we as leaders had walked away from them. I think the member for Fowler, in her address, said that when she was first at work she found really strong discrimination against one particular group in the community in her area. They felt not celebrated; they felt like they didn't belong. Hope for the future, control over your life, and belonging—these things make for a very happy community because people feel like they belong. Every member of this House would have been to a citizenship ceremony where new citizens have said: 'I now belong. I can call myself an Aussie overseas. I get off a plane and I'm home. I'm home! It doesn't matter the colour of my skin or the shape of my face. I'm home in this nation, where I and my family belong.' They celebrate not only their hard work, endeavour and success but also their children being able to get a university education and go on to do great things, both here and overseas. Why am I so closely connected to this? It's because I represent the Latrobe Valley, where workers came from all over Europe to build the Snowy power system, which has given us such great benefit for all these years—until power prices went through the roof and we started to close power stations and even blew one up.

I thank the member for Fowler for bringing this forward, but it means that, for us to succeed as leaders, we must have continual vigilance in ensuring that new Australians are included in our society. We must become inclusive parliamentarians, and inclusive in government, making sure that people know that they belong in this Great South Land, where they have built themselves an amazing, fantastic future, to the point where one now sits with us in the parliament.

Tania Lawrence (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to be able to speak to this motion by the member for Fowler. In my first speech in this place, I spoke of the need to really value and incorporate the great untapped wealth of knowledge and experience in those Australians who have migrated here. I reminded us of Gough Whitlam, who said in 1972, 'We need to liberate the talents and uplift the horizons of the Australian people.' In 1973, now 50 years ago, the Whitlam government immigration minister, Albert Grassby, published our first multiculturalism policy paper, A multi-cultural society for the future. No-one understood the word 'multiculturalism' back then. It was groundbreaking. Grassby wrote:

In a family the overall attachment to the common good need not impose a sameness on the outlook or activity of each member, nor need these members deny their individuality and distinctiveness in order to seek a superficial and unnatural conformity. The important thing is that all are committed to the good of all.

Grassby's pluralism was the seed for the policy changes that followed. It is safe to say that Australia's rich cultural tapestry in 2023 owes much to the far-sightedness of people like Whitlam and Grassby. Our parliaments, too, now bear evidence of change, with many more cultural backgrounds represented in them than ever before. It's an unfinished journey, but one that I'm happy to share.

The member for Fowler points out that now more than half—about 55 per cent—of our population is born, or has one parent born, overseas. This figure is accentuated in Hasluck and Western Australia, where it is actually closer to 62 per cent. Our myriad connections with the wider world are closer than ever, with people in Hasluck hailing from New Zealand, India, the Philippines, South Africa and many other lands. We have had the SBS for 50 years now, broadcasting in over 60 languages, which I'm told is a world record. Many of the one in four Australians who speak another language at home consume their daily news in that language first and in English, perhaps, second. In Hasluck, with its quickly expanding mortgage belt, Punjabi has overtaken Italian in recent years as the second most spoken language, and Gujarati is not far behind. These communities provide language lessons for their children so that they grow up knowing their mother tongue.

So what is the only thing holding back greater appreciation for our many communities? Is it a lack of curiosity? Is it racism? Is it simply ignorance? Education has a great role to play, not merely through formal schooling but by the sharing by those communities of the cultural, lingual and religious gifts with the community at large, often supported by governments at every level. The opportunities to mix, interact and learn from each other will liberate the great untapped wealth of knowledge and experience that I spoke of.

In the May budget, the government made allocations for further assistance for our multicultural communities. There will be an improved delivery model for the Adult Migrant English Program from 1 January 2025 building on the allocations made in the October budget for improving that program. Supporting English language development for new arrivals is not just important from a practical viewpoint, allowing migrants to better connect with their day-to-day challenges; it is a friendly introduction to Australian culture and a welcoming gesture.

The government is also providing $9.1 million to extend the youth transition support services and further assist young migrants in their employment outcomes. These measures are on top of the investment the government has made in bringing down visa waiting times across the whole immigration system. The coalition allowed the migration system to be so banked up that it was almost unworkable. People shouldn't have to wait years for a visa or for an answer. And the bringing of greater speed and certainty to these processes is another way to support multicultural communities. The recognition of overseas qualifications is an ongoing challenge, one which it will serve us to streamline. I was glad to see this as part of the recently signed FTA with India, which is now the leading source of migrants to Australia. Annex 8(c) of the agreement directs the parties to enhance cooperation on skills development and mutual recognition of professional qualifications as well as vocational education and training qualifications.

The multicultural review framework, the first such review for decades, commenced in October last year and will report by March 2024. It will be comprehensive and will draw upon the gifts, skills and talents of all of our cultural groups and of all who cherish them.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.