Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak of an event last Saturday night in Adelaide at the Klemzig community centre, where the Uighur community of South Australia came together. It was wonderful to see this community celebrating Nowruz—the new year of the Uighur community—for the first time in a large event and to see all of the community come together to celebrate the new year. It was a real pleasure to stand in solidarity with the Uighur community on the day of our state election. South Australia has one of the largest Uighur communities outside of Turkiye, with at least 1,500 people calling Adelaide home.

This event was a perfect illustration of how our society benefits from immigration, from refugees who come here to seek peace and safety and who enlarge, improve and enrich our communities. Healthy societies value multiculturalism and celebrate diversity and difference. It's so important to celebrate the direct contribution of culture and connection with diverse ancestral traditions. We saw so many of them last Saturday, including singing, dancing, cooking and a lot of conversation.

We Greens have always stood in solidarity with the Uighur community. When the Premier of China visited Australia in 2024, the Greens urged the Prime Minister to raise concerns of human rights abuses occurring against the Uighur community within China. I spoke of this to the community on Saturday. We've also introduced a bill to end the importation of goods produced by forced labour, including goods from provinces like Xinjiang. It is not appropriate that goods come into this country that have been produced by people who are forced to work in conditions which trample on the human rights of Uighurs.

The Greens continue to stand in solidarity with the Uighur people, alongside the people of Tibet, the people of Palestine and all oppressed people around the world. It was especially important to do so on the day of our state election, when the anti-immigration policies of One Nation were receiving much attention. We discussed over lunch how our lives had changed and how their lives in particular had changed in recent times.

The Uighur community is, in the main, Muslim, and their responses to my question about what had changed for them were very powerful. We've seen Islamophobia and racism increase in our community. The costs of that were very clear to these individuals as they talked about what had changed for them and for their children in the last two years. They feel less safe. As one woman said, just as she was walking across the road to come to the Klemzig event, an occupant of a car had wound down the window and shouted Islamophobic comments to her and her two young children. She had been screamed at with a racial slur, just as she was making her way to the Uighur new year celebration. One mother said to me that she no longer felt safe taking her children to her local park. The rise of One Nation imposes real costs on people's lives, on their safety, on the safety of their children, on the nature of childhood and on the safety of this beautiful Uighur community.

We know in the Greens that we must be committed to creating a humane and inclusive system of immigration that prioritises family reunion, looks after refugees and strengthens our communities. We know that family reunion visas need to be fairer, they need to be faster and they need to be more affordable. We know that the housing crisis that this country suffers from is not caused by immigration. We had a stop to immigration in the years of COVID, and house prices increased nonetheless dramatically. Everyone deserves fairness, compassion and the opportunity to thrive, regardless of where they come from.

So thank you to the South Australian Uighur community for their hospitality and for the celebration of their culture on Saturday, a day of celebration of democracy. We look to improve democracy for people around the world, to an end to forced labour and to continuing celebration of the richness of a multicultural society that benefits from the contribution of the Uighur community, their children and their families.