Julie-Ann Campbell (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm incredibly proud to be one of the 15 per cent of Australians of Chinese heritage in my local electorate on Brisbane's south side—Moreton. My family immigrated to this country from China in the late 1800s. My gong gong's family, the Moo family, came to Darwin first. We suspect that perhaps their name wasn't originally spelt or pronounced 'Moo', m-o-o. My po po's family immigrated again at the same rough time to Melbourne—the Lau Gooey family. We suspect that that name may not have been spelt g-o-o-e-y. This was the world that my family came into. It has been almost 150 years that they've been here, and there are so many different families with a similar story to mine. People from different multicultural backgrounds contributing to our economy, contributing to our culture, contributing to our society—that is something that continues.

But there was a break. Can I tell you—in 1901 the doors were shut to people who looked like me. The doors were shut to people who looked like my family. In December 1901, the Immigration Restriction Act came into law. It was among one of the first pieces of legislation that was introduced. It was designed to limit non-British migration to Australia, and it represented the formal establishment of what we now know as the White Australia policy. The act gave immigration officers the power to make any non-European migrant sit a 50-word dictation test—initially in any European language and, after 1905, in any prescribed language, with languages chosen at the discretion of the immigration officer. It was easy to ensure failure for migrants deemed undesirable—failure of people who looked like me. The test was administered 1,359 times prior to 1909, with just 52 people granted entry to Australia. After 1909, not a single migrant made to sit the test passed it. This is our history. It's something that we must remember.

After World War II, the Chifley government began to relax the policy to allow refugees from continental Europe to come to Australia. This included those who fit the image of White Australia and that ideal but also migrants from other backgrounds in regulated numbers. In the 1970s the Whitlam government, a Labor government, completely eliminated it.

The first piece of federal legislation to make racial discrimination unlawful in Australia was the Racial Discrimination Act. It was introduced by the Whitlam government and passed on 11 June 1975. Today and this year, we celebrate its 50th anniversary. It makes it against the law to treat someone unfairly because of their race, because of their colour, because of their descent, because of their national or ethnic origin or immigration status. It is rooted in the idea of fairness and that it doesn't matter what colour your skin is. You should be treated equally. For employment, it prohibits discrimination during job advertisements, recruitment, selection processes, training, decisions, promotions and employment terms. In services, it makes it unlawful for service providers, including banks, insurance providers, government departments and transport providers, to discriminate against someone based on their race. In housing, it makes it unlawful to discriminate in renting or in buying.

In 1995, we saw amendments to this act, amendments on racial vilification, to make it unlawful in section 18C. These laws, all of them, are important, but they are not enough, because laws are not enough to change something. Laws help us set the framework to get there, but it is all of us who must make them real, who must bring them to life, who must ensure that those fundamental values of fairness, of equality, are upheld every single day, not just when we put an act through the parliament. This act is underpinned by those principles, of equality, of fairness.

Australia has the world's oldest continuous culture, as well as non-Indigenous Australians, who identify with over 300 different ancestries. It is estimated that, before British colonisation, over 250 First Nations languages and 800 dialects were in use in this country. Over 29 per cent of Australia's population was born overseas and 48 per cent of Australians have a parent born overseas. The top five countries of birth in Australia by number in 2021? England, India, China, New Zealand, Philippines.

I am incredibly proud to represent the most multicultural electorate in all of Queensland. My electorate has 39 per cent of people who were born overseas. And can I tell you that Australia is absolutely a multicultural success story? It's a multicultural success story, and, whether you call that a melting pot or whether you call it a salad, we are stronger for it. We're stronger for it because our differences—our differences in terms of experiences, what we bring to the table—make us collectively better. They make us collectively better, because it's not only those differences that we bring that make us stronger; it's also the fact that we share fundamental values as Australians that sits behind that and drive us together as a country to make it stronger.

As I said before, legislation in this space is necessary but insufficient. We can never take for granted the tapestry that we have woven when it comes to our multicultural country. The concern that I have at the moment is that there are people who are pulling at the threads of that tapestry. There are people who are picking away at that and want to make the multicultural success something of the past. It starts as a dog whistle, but it ends with a drumbeat.

I grew up in the 1990s in Queensland. It was a time when Pauline Hanson and One Nation held 11 seats in the parliament out of 89. And, when you do the math, that's a lot. It was a time when I came to know what a dog whistle sounds like. And I think that, when you look like me, you do know what that sounds like. When you look like Minister Aly, you do know what that sounds like. So I did actually want to talk about something that the minister says, because I think it is a really important point when it comes to multiculturalism in this country.

The minister talks about going beyond the concept of food when we talk about multiculturalism. I want to explain this. It's the idea that, when you stand up for multiculturalism, you stand up against racism, and you stand up for that melting pot that we are so proud of. It is nice to talk about food and how good all of the different types of cuisine that we get from across the globe are, but it is not enough. It is nice to talk about colour and vibrancy and clothing from all of the many parts of our globe, but it is not enough. It is nice to talk about the beautiful dancing and music and culture that so many different communities bring to our community, but it is not enough. When we support our multicultural communities, when we stand against racial discrimination, we have to back them in, not just with words, not just with niceties, but with action. I say to our multicultural communities, to those who have experienced racial discrimination, to those who have experienced the hurt that can come from people treating you differently for the way you look: Labor stands with you. We stand with you not just today, as we celebrate an important milestone with the Racial Discrimination Act, but we stand with you every single day, and we will back you.

Anniversaries give us the opportunity to reflect. They acknowledge those, from First Nations people through to a myriad of ethnic communities, who have made a difference and a big impact on this country economically, socially and culturally. We all make a difference—individuals, community organisations and government. I see this every day in my electorate of Moreton. But this anniversary is also a reminder that we must continue to fight for what we believe in when it comes to racial discrimination.

Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party, Minister for International Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I congratulate the member for Moreton on her excellent contribution on this occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Racial Discrimination Act. It is, indeed, an honour to serve with her in this parliament.

As the member for Moreton mentioned, today we mark the 50th anniversary of the RDA, or the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. It was the first law to recognise and protect the right of everyone in Australia to be free from discrimination based on race. Fifty years on, Australians take great pride in our free and democratic country, where all of us have the right to live without fear of discrimination and free from acts of intimidation and violence on the basis of race, ethnicity or cultural heritage. Modern Australia is a migrant nation. It is who we are. The Racial Discrimination Act underscores and protects this vital part of this proud nation. Our multicultural success belongs to all Australians, every single one of them, no matter where you came from, no matter where your parents came from and no matter how you came to be here. Half of all Australians were born overseas or have a parent who was born overseas.

My story is one of those stories. I'm an Australian, but I'm also a migrant. At the age of two, my family chose Australia, settling in the Western Suburbs of Sydney. We quickly became a part of our local community. We had neighbours from Britain and New Zealand, but also from China, Greece and the former Yugoslavia. My Australia is defined by my childhood, in the suburbs where we would gather under the hot sun to play a game of legendary Aussie driveway cricket. We improvised wickets out of garbage cans, pausing only intermittently to move the wicket to allow cars to pass by. There we played for hours under the hot sun, on the hot tarmac, interrupted only by the cry of parents standing on the front porch letting us know that it was time to come inside for dinner. And as each child's name was called out into the dusky sky, a different accent could be made out—Greek, Italian, English, Irish, Indian, Swedish, Chinese, Arabic, Australian. Nobody made fun of each other's strange names or the funny way our mothers or fathers would call out for us.

Under this 48th Parliament, our House of Representatives is the most diverse it has been in the history of this nation—and it is richer because of it. At the 2025 election, Australians across the nation voted overwhelmingly for a parliament that looked like the community it represents. A study by the Scanlon Foundation earlier this month found that 83 per cent of Australians think that multiculturalism is good for our country, and they're right. The Albanese Labor government unequivocally stands for multiculturalism reflecting our national identity.

I am honoured to be appointed as the first standalone cabinet Minister for Multicultural Affairs.

Honourable members: Hear, hear!

An honourable member: You're a fantastic minister, too.

Thank you to my colleagues for their interjections there.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Make sure they're recorded in Hansard!

Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party, Minister for International Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

With the launch of the Office for Multicultural Affairs we now have a means to truly drive a cohesive and renewed approach to multiculturalism that fits in with our modern multicultural Australia. It's an opportunity not only to celebrate the richness of our diversity—the member for Moreton spoke so eloquently on what that means. She spoke about how we move beyond celebration and how we move beyond the valuing of food—as long as it tastes like chicken!—colours and festivities to valuing and acknowledging multiculturalism as a fundamental aspect of who we are. Multiculturalism is the mainstream. It's not a semicolon-and. It's not a postscript. It's not a nice-to-have. It's not an afterthought. It is Australia and it is Australians. Today it is woven into the social and cultural fabric of a modern Australia, from Lunar New Year to Eid or Diwali or Rosh Hashana. These events are celebrated in small towns and big cities from coast to coast.

For 50 years, time and time again, the Racial Discrimination Act has helped us strengthen our multiculturalism and strengthen our identity as a multicultural nation. The act has made enormous strides in improving racial equality, including shining a spotlight on wage theft of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and invalidating laws that discriminated against First Nations land rights. It also set the foundation for future antidiscrimination protections on age, sex and disability. In that regard it was quite revolutionary—a watershed moment in Australia's history. Unfortunately there are still those who are made to defend their very presence and belonging in Australia, which harms not only those directly involved but also our whole society. I want to go back to my first term in parliament—elected in 2016.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Hear, hear! A good year!

Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party, Minister for International Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Says another class of 2016 person sitting next to me, the member for Bruce! One of the very first debates that I got to participate in in this place was the debate to protect section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act makes it unlawful to undertake any act that is reasonably likely to 'offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate' a person or a group because of their race, the colour of their skin or where they were born. In a country that prides itself on Australian values—the values of mateship, a fair go and equality—this should not be controversial. It should not be controversial that we take a moment to ensure that we are not offending, humiliating, insulting or intimidating our fellow Australians because of their race, the colour of their skin or where they were born. This should not be controversial.

At the time of that debate in 2016 the Attorney-General—appointed by Prime Minister Turnbull at the time—said that people have a right to be bigots, and those opposite mounted an argument against section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. It was an argument that pitted Australian against Australian and rights against rights. They argued that the right to free speech trumped the right to feel safe and trumped the right to live your life without offence, without being humiliated, without being insulted, without feeling like the 'other' and without being made to feel like the lesser. I'm incredibly passionate about this, as is anyone who has been on the receiving end. If you have been on the receiving end of discrimination, if you have been insulted, if you have been humiliated and if you have been offended because of the colour of your skin or because of your race, then you know how deeply it cuts. You know how it carries you. You carry it inside you like a little piece of a broken bone your entire life. You know how much it impacts you.

So we went to that debate in 2016, I am proud to say that we won the debate and that section 18 remains a vital part of the Racial Discrimination Act. As I said in my first speech in this place, I will fight for every person's rights. I will fight for the right of free speech for every Australian. But I will not stand by and watch others get brow beaten into accepting second-class citizenship because of the colour of their skin.

This government believes in the right of all people to be protected from bigotry, from vilification, from discrimination and from hate. We will continue to foster respect, belonging, understanding and inclusion, and we will continue to create real change in the lives of Australians. Because while the Racial Discrimination Act has guided us for 50 years, we need to make sure we have the right measures in place to protect multiculturalism in Australia for the next 50.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the Minister for Multicultural Affairs for that address. She may be often quietly spoken, but this parliament has been a better place from the moment she stepped into it. I know from our many personal conversations—she is also a friend—just how much racial abuse she has put up with every day, be it in direct messages, on social media, threats to her office or even to her face. I thank you for your service and I thank you for being an inspiration for so many people in my community. Thank you.

The 50th anniversary of the Whitlam Labor government's Racial Discrimination Act was a moment worth reflecting on for our entire nation. One of the Whitlam Labor government's last major acts was the Racial Discrimination Act, having earlier in its term abolished the last vestiges of the old racist white Australia policy. The Racial Discrimination Act stood the test of time for 50 years. It sets the legal foundation for modern Australia as the proud multicultural nation that we know and love today. It was an attempt to legislate for human dignity and equality of all people regardless of race, ethnicity or origin.

I listened carefully this morning in the chamber to the speech of the shadow Attorney-General earlier. There were nice words and noble phrases but it was also a whitewashing of the history of this law. The truth is in 1975 numerous conservative politicians rallied against the introduction of the Racial Discrimination Act. Contrary to this blurred historical vision and pretence that everyone embraced it in some kumbaya fest, the bill was hard-fought in the parliament then. The then backbencher John Howard stated, 'One does nothing towards reducing the incidence of racial tension by legislative coercion.' As we know from the 1980s, he has a lot of form on issues of race and migration. Some conservative MPs even tried to debate the third reading of the bill in April 1975 to protest its passage. But when the bill passed both houses of the parliament in June 1975, Australia was made a better nation. At the proclamation of the bill on 31 October 1975, 11 days before the dismissal of the Whitlam government, then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam described the aims of the act as to entrench new attitudes of tolerance and understanding in the hearts and minds of the people, saying the new act 'wrote it firmly into the legislation that Australia is in reality a multicultural nation, in which the linguistic and cultural heritage of the Aboriginal people and of peoples from all parts of the world can find an honoured place'.

The significance of the Racial Discrimination Act for modern Australia, or I could say multicultural Australia because modern Australia and multicultural Australia are the same thing, cannot be overstated. We are a better nation for the vision and courage of the Whitlam government. As has been said, of course the act has not cured all racial ills, no law can. A law cannot and does not seek to stop racist beliefs or determine what people think. This law focuses on behaviours and seeks to establish the legal and societal norms for how Australians relate to each other regardless of ethnicity, fostering mutual respect and social cohesion.

Now, an Australian, to me, is anyone committed to our country and our democratic institutions and to the principle of mutual respect for their fellow Australians, who are likely to be, or most certainly are, very, very different—be it their ethnicity, their identity or their beliefs. Overwhelmingly, I believe, Australians love and cherish our multicultural character. I love our multicultural nation. We see this in the research, in the Scanlon Foundation's work. We see it in the daily lives and the decency of the Australian people in schools, workplaces, sporting clubs and the community.

As I said, I love our country; I cherish our diversity. But still today the sad reality is there's a very small, loud—increasingly loud at the moment—minority who deny the basic reality of Australia as a multicultural nation or those who choose to play footsy with issues of race and migration. Some of them have long been here in this parliament—One Nation, of course, but not just in One Nation. Sadly, some are also amongst the opposition—not all of them, but too many.

We saw at the federal election, when Australians overwhelmingly rejected the politics of fear, division, discrimination and toxic negativity, that those leaders who operate in the echo chamber, pandering to their most extreme supporters, will fail. They failed nationally and they will always fail in our vibrant, diverse democracy. Real leaders cannot talk out both sides of their mouth. It's clear that the Liberals have still not yet learned the lesson of the last election. Some of them are trying; some very decent people are trying. But we saw it with Senator Price's comments relating to Indian Australians, for which she still refuses to apologise. We have, for decades, had a proudly non-discriminatory migration policy, and long may that continue.

The former opposition leader was never above a crack at groups of Australians if he saw a political advantage to try and divide Australia on issues of race—the Africans had a turn, Lebanese migrants 'shouldn't have come', Muslim Australians. There was the shameful failure to stand up for Australians of Chinese heritage experiencing shocking racism during COVID, including in my community. It's ultimately a matter for the Liberal Party of today—I don't say the 'modern Liberals'—to explain why they continue to get embroiled in a race to the bottom on issues of race and migration. Increasingly, it seems that some of them just don't love our country; they don't love the reality of modern, multicultural Australia.

As I said, this is not a new thing. In my first 12 months in parliament, back in 2016, I was bright eyed and bushy tailed, with ideas and things I wanted to do. I was stunned to discover, on arrival in Canberra, that the then government's main legislative priority—poor old Malcolm Turnbull had been dragged to the right by the IPA brigade, who'd come in; here he is, the member for Goldstein!—was to weaken the Racial Discrimination Act, to water down the protections of section 18C. That might have been a great, fun debate to have in Canberra, but the lesson I learned then was that leadership matters. The tone, the words and the propositions that political leaders put forward into the country impact daily life in the suburbs and communities. I saw it in my community, because, while that debate was raging, we saw a spike in public racism. We saw people abused on the bus, we saw hijabs ripped off, and we saw turbans ripped off, because of the debate on—as they said—the 'right to be a bigot'. I was incredibly proud of the thousands of people that we stood in front of when Labor stood with modern Australia, multicultural Australia in the Springvale town hall and right across the nation—including the Jewish community, most loudly and proudly—to stop the Liberals' attempts to weaken this law that today they say they love. I'm glad we did.

It's strange how the shadow Attorney-General this morning forgot to mention, amongst his fine prose, his steadfast advocacy to weaken the Racial Discrimination Act—the very law he claimed to support and embrace today. He gave multiple speeches in 2017 arguing to repeal section 18C and the protections against racist hate speech. I wonder if that remains his view. I wonder how many other Liberals will have the courage to come in here today to speak on the debate and state what they really think. I haven't seen anyone on the speaking list—maybe the member for Goldstein is here to speak. The question, though, in all of this debate and all of this footsy with weakening the law that they pretend to support today is that they've never actually said what racist things they think people should be able to say to each other that they can't say today—literally what? Be precise; be specific. They've never been clear on that. It might be an intellectual debate in the IPA. Maybe they could've drafted the law differently, but the fact is that it's stood the test of time.

When you unleash these debates, they have real world consequences in electorates like mine. That's just the truth of it. I ask the shadow Attorney-General if he still wants to water down section 18C of the act. Is that still the Liberals' policy? I also observe the sad irony that if the Liberals had their way in 2017 then the protections of section 18C would not have been available to the Jewish community, who brought a complaint with the AHRC in 2024 rightly calling out racist, antisemitic hate-preaching. The Federal Court upheld that case and said that the lectures were fundamentally racist and antisemitic, and offensive and insulting statements. This law would also not have been there to call out Senator Hanson's disgusting, racist remarks against a fellow senator, telling her 'to piss off back to Pakistan'—clearly a racist attack, as the Federal Court found. This 50th anniversary would be a great time for the Liberal Party of today to apologise for their carry-on and sustained attempts to weaken Australia's Racial Discrimination Act, and to promise never to try this again.

I will close on this: being diverse is not the same thing as being a successful multicultural country. We can all think of countries that are diverse but are not successful and not cohesive. Success requires legal foundations and norms which this act provides, amongst others. It requires investment, particularly to help people new to Australia to settle in and build their lives and build the nation, but it also requires leadership. It requires political leadership, it requires faith leadership, and it requires leaders from business communities and sporting clubs, but, perhaps most importantly, day in, day out, it requires the contributions of thousands of community leaders and multicultural communities who stand up for their communities and who speak up for these norms, and the overwhelming number of decent Australians who support our multicultural character.