Jerome Laxale (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Over the past few months, my community of Bennelong has once again been doing what it does best—celebrating moments of cultural significance together. We marked Lunar New Year with lanterns and lion dancing. We gathered for Holi in clouds of colour and joy. We're currently preparing for Nowruz with reflection and renewal, and on Australia Day we stood together as one community in the greatest country on earth. In Bennelong these are nice events or fringe occasions. They're not political statements and they're not competing expressions of identity. They are different traditions lived and celebrated side-by-side in one Australian community. Yet at a national level we're seeing some leaders live a very different reality and lead a very different debate.

We've heard the opposition leader say migration standards are too low. We've heard the leader of One Nation state plainly that they don't believe in multiculturalism. We have heard senior Liberal figures now promoted to the frontbench claim that Australians are becoming strangers in their own home. This is a terrible debate they're having. It's not the language of a quietly confident country and it's definitely not the language I hear in my electorate. It's a tone that suggests belonging here in Australia is fragile, it's a tone that puts people's identity under threat and it sets up the ridiculous proposition that there are 'real Australians' or 'better Australians' and then there's everyone else. When leaders like those of the Liberals, Nationals and One Nation legitimise division, and the language shifts that way, it reframes the debate. It stops being about policy settings and it becomes about belonging. It becomes about who gets to feel secure in this country and who doesn't.

There's a dangerous and false implication in this debate led by those three parties—that is, that celebrating cultural heritage and multiculturalism somehow weakens Australian identity. From what I see in Bennelong and across the country, that idea couldn't be further from the truth. When families stand together on Australia Day and then gather for Lunar New Year, when children of all faiths and backgrounds throw colour at one another at Holi and then sing the national anthem at their school assembly, when communities prepare for Nowruz, and when small businesses are coaching local sports and volunteering in their local neighbourhoods, I don't see that as division at all; that's modern Australia. Multiculturalism is an Australian value, not the opposite. In Bennelong we do not experience these celebrations as competing loyalties; we experience them as a shared joy. You don't become less Australian because you celebrate your cultural heritage; you are Australian because you do.

Yet too often in this place, and in parts of our national conversation, we hear something else. We hear migration spoken about as though it's a threat rather than a contribution. We hear rhetoric that suggests cultural diversity is a weakness to be managed rather than a strength to be embraced. We see the politics of division and grievance in debates that demand seriousness, care and responsibility. We can and should have serious discussions about the challenges we face today. We should debate housing supply. We should debate lack of investment in infrastructure. We should debate migration settings in a responsible and evidence-based way. But we shouldn't pretend that migration is to blame for each of those challenges, as some here do, because that has dark consequences for people like my family and people who live in electorates like mine.

When migration was negative, while borders were closed, rents rose more than during the decade prior. During that same period, housing prices surged by 25 per cent. Housing became more unaffordable during a period of closed borders. The evidence doesn't support the blame being pushed out by others that migration is to blame for our housing crisis. Blaming migrants won't fix this crisis, which is 40 years in the making. Blaming migrants will not reduce cost-of-living pressures. Blaming migrants is lazy and divisive, and it will only weaken our country at a time when we need it to be stronger and we need to be more unified.

Communities are living through a period of grief and uncertainty. Communities across our country have carried enormous emotional weight. They've watched events unfold locally but also overseas. Families have felt shock, and they're anxious. In moments like these, leadership matters and words matter. When national leaders speak as though belonging in Australia is conditional, those words travel, and they land in schoolyards, in workplaces and in neighbourhoods, like those in Bennelong. They make people of all ages question whether or not they are fully accepted. They make families wonder whether their loyalty is being silently measured because of the language they speak at home or the colour of their skin.

Social cohesion doesn't erode by accident. It erodes when it's chipped away, comment by comment, headline by headline, insinuation by insinuation. Rebuilding that trust is far harder than undermining it. In Bennelong I represent proud Iranian Australians who are not defined by their geopolitics. I represent Chinese Australians who are not defined by foreign governments. I represent proud Indian and Korean Australians and many others who are not defined by events beyond our shores. I represent a huge Italian community in Ryde, who settled here decades ago—having once arrived as newcomers, they are now woven into the very fabric of our community. There are people who arrived generations ago, like my family, and those who arrived last year, and they stand side by side. They love our country. They're not outsiders. They're not temporary guests. They're Australians. When they hear national leaders suggest that standards are too low or that belonging depends on people changing who they are, they feel it, their children hear it, and communities are weaker because of it.

In Bennelong, multiculturalism isn't abstract; it's who we are. It's visible in our shopfronts and our classrooms. It's celebrated in our parks. It's lived every single day. Every street in my electorate has benefited from the contribution of migrants. Our small businesses, schools, sporting clubs and community organisations are all stronger because of the diversity within them, not despite it. We're one of the most successful multicultural nations in the world, and that didn't happen by accident. It took a lot of work. It happened because leaders and communities made a choice, again and again, to build a shared future rather than to pit Australian against Australian. That same choice now sits before us.

In this place and in front of the cameras, we can reach for a rhetoric that pits Australian against Australian or we can choose unity. We can simplify our problems by blaming others, or we can do the hard work of governing together on behalf of all Australians. It's easy to imply that belonging is conditional. It's easy to suggest that some Australians must prove more than others. What is harder is to say that multiculturalism is not a weakness to be managed but a strength to be defended. It's even been put in our national anthem, which reads:

For those who've come across the seas

We've boundless plains to share;

With courage let us all combine

To Advance Australia Fair.

It's with courage, again, that we need to combine. And I say to the Liberals, the Nationals and One Nation: be courageous; be leaders. In Bennelong I see that leadership every week, from families who live every day together as Australians from every corner of the earth. Bennelong is stronger because of our differences. Australia thrives because of our diversity, and Australia is better when we celebrate multiculturalism than when we attack it and blame it for problems we must face.