Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I also wish to speak to this important report on the experience of diaspora communities in Australia. I was very pleased to be able to be part of the committee inquiry and attend the hearings and hear from witnesses about their experiences as members of a diaspora community. The report and the evidence that was given to us outline three key areas which need attention. One is the various communities' ability to access services, access grants programs and access the services that they need. The barriers in the way of them being able to do that are the fact that they are very complex systems, it's not clear where to go to access support and help, and the fact that often small, under-resourced community organisations don't have the resources to be able to fill out very complicated grant applications, for example. So there was a lot of importance placed on trying to reform those systems, streamline those systems so that the various diaspora communities are able to access services and opportunities that the rest of Australia are able to.

For the other two areas, I think it's important to look at them in an interlinked way. One was the experience of racism of many of our diaspora communities, and the second, of course, was from people in Australia who are diaspora communities—refugees or asylum seekers or people fleeing authoritarian, totalitarian regimes. Clearly one of the strong threads of this inquiry and the report was outlining the experiences of people that continue to be intimidated here in Australia by those authoritarian regimes, as previous senators have outlined, China being the prime one amongst them—the actions of the Chinese government in pursuing people of Chinese origin here in Australia. It is worth noting that China isn't the only one; we received evidence from people from a range of countries who had their home country not wanting them to speak out about conditions in their home country and applying pressure on them and on their families and friends and colleagues back in their home country to try and silence them. So it is an important thread of this report to be supporting people, to be removing that level of foreign interference so that people here in Australia can speak out freely, do have freedom of speech and are able to speak out about the appalling human rights violations going on in their home countries.

As a member of the Greens, my approach to foreign relations and foreign affairs comes from a human rights' framework. We put human rights absolutely first. It is important that we do everything we can to support people around the world, whether in China, whether in Cambodia, whether in some African countries, so that people in those countries have human rights and don't have their human rights abused. It's also important we do everything we can for people to be able to speak out here in Australia and support freedom of speech, democracy and people's overall rights in their home countries.

Let's go to the point which has been debated in this chamber while we've been discussing this report: when it comes to the actions of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese totalitarian government, it is incredibly important to recognise that speaking out about the actions of the Chinese government does have an impact on people of Chinese background here in Australia. It does impact on Australians of Asian heritage. We've got to be incredibly careful that, in very rightly criticising the actions of the Chinese Communist Party, there aren't then flow-on impacts on people of Asian heritage here in Australia. Too often some of the discussion and some of those criticisms get conflated into xenophobia, they get conflated into an overall attack on anyone of Chinese heritage and they inflame racism against people of Chinese background here in Australia. We heard plenty of evidence in our inquiry about what impact that has had, about the rise of racism against people of Asian background that's occurring in Australia. China is in our headlines, and the China-Australia relationship is very contentious at the moment, so there is a lot of genuine and appropriate criticism of the Chinese government. But that flows over into people being victimised and having their human rights impacted here in Australia. They are being impacted; they are being attacked in the street. They are being called names. They don't feel that they are being valued as citizens, just because of their heritage.

What I think is also important is that it's not appropriate—to follow on from Senator Abetz's contribution just now—to ask every Australian of Chinese background where they stand and whether they condemn the actions of the Chinese Communist Party. Many will want to speak out but many others feel they can't, and it is not appropriate to do that. It is also not appropriate to single out people of Chinese background and ask them how they feel about the actions of the Chinese Communist Party and not ask everybody else. Senator Abetz wasn't asking the questions that he asked in that committee hearing of people not of Chinese background; he specifically just asked the people of Chinese background. When they weren't willing to condemn the actions of the Chinese totalitarian state he then went to town on them and made a perfect point of what, in fact, those witnesses were pointing out: it makes it very difficult for people of Chinese origin to stick their heads up above the parapet and to contribute and be involved in political and community life here in Australia because of those sorts of pressures. These are the factors that we really need to be very careful and very sensitive about. We need to be very clear that when and if we are pointing out, quite justifiably, human rights abuses and actions—whether by China, or by Cambodia or by other states—that the criticism is not then having a bearing or an impact on people of those backgrounds here in Australia.

To that end, I think we need to have a lot more focus on what we need to do here in Australia in order to address rising racism in this country. Of course, that then goes to another suite of the recommendations of this report about the need to have a comprehensive, well-resourced and effective antiracism strategy. There are too many people in this country who are happy to say: 'I'm not racist. We're a thriving multicultural country. We're not a racist country,' who are basically living in ignorance. They're not aware of the rising levels of racism and the need for us to take serious action about it. If any of the recommendations in this report are going to have notice taken of them, I really hope that it is the one about the need to really thoroughly and comprehensively address the rise in racism, and that we need a comprehensive antiracism strategy. That's so we can make sure that people of all backgrounds in Australia feel they can have their human rights upheld here in Australia, just like having human rights upheld all around the world.

I think that the report is a very important contribution to the debate here in Australia and I look forward to seeing some of the recommendations implemented.