David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There's been a lot of discussion about support for Iran in the last few days. But I'll tell you what Australia can do as an act of real solidarity with the Iranian diaspora and with those struggling in Iran. We can start by offering a fair migration and political asylum system. There is a wealth of skills and knowledge from Iran that Australia is already lucky to have. I know that there are people from Iran who have come here to complete their PhDs. There are those on a pathway to a 191 visa who have been contributing in our region. They've been promised permanency, and they've yet to get it—waiting and waiting for an unfair system to process their claim.

To all of those who are looking to bring their loved ones, their skills and their knowledge to our country to make our community brighter, smarter and better off, I say, on behalf of my party, the Greens: thank you. Don't let the increasingly divisive rhetoric put you off from trying. We know that our country is better when people are here contributing collectively to our future from across this wonderful diverse planet.

For our Iranian friends who are here, the No. 1 thing I used to hear when I talked to the community—and we still hear it clearly—is that they want to get their mums and their dads out of Iran. They want to bring their partners here and their children. We know that this government, like the one before, caps the number of family visas being processed each year, despite it being against the law, and the backlog for family visas has exploded. Unprocessed partner applications have grown by 72 per cent under this government and are at the highest point ever, with nearly 100,000 people waiting to see if their loved one can join them here. It takes on average two years to get a dependant child visa processed. It takes 74 months, or six years, for an orphan relative visa to be processed. Think about that—a child waiting six years to join their remaining family.

If we genuinely care about people in war-torn countries or living under oppressive regimes, we need a fair immigration system—one that treats people as humans who can become a wonderful part of our community. Right now, the people of Iran need that humanity. Perhaps the most dehumanising immigration policy targeted at people from Iran is the one that targets those who have come here seeking asylum by sea. For over a decade, the Liberal and Labor governments, cheered on by One Nation, have prevented people seeking asylum from finding a permanent home in Australia. There are some 2,000 people from Iran in this country who have been here for a decade and who do not have a permanent home here because of those unfair policies. If you want to know what solidarity with the people of Iran looks like, remove those unfair policies. Surely, the government's position cannot be that they return. Surely, that can't seriously be the position of the coalition or One Nation. And, surely, after a decade, we can welcome them into our community, where they have already been a wonderful contributing part of for over a decade.

We receive so many emails to our office, and I know that you read them, and some just express the moment that we're living in. I want to share with the chamber this email from a constituent, who has given her permission for it to be shared:

Dear David,

I am writing to you not just as a constituent, but as a heartbroken Australian citizen of Indian origin, struggling to understand where I now stand in the country I have called home for almost two decades.

When I hear statements such as, "We welcome all who share Australian values, but the door must be shut to those who reject our beliefs and way of life," I understand the principle behind them. I agree that immigration should always be based on shared values, respect for the law, and responsibility.

But I am left asking: where do Australian citizens like me fit into this conversation?

Are we now being silently categorised as people who do not share Australian values—simply because of the colour of our skin?

Australia gave us opportunities, and in return, we gave this country 19 years of our lives, our labour, our loyalty, and our children's futures.

I ask you plainly: what does it mean to be Australian?

I believed it meant respecting one another, standing together, and treating each other fairly. But increasingly, it feels as though being Australian now comes with an unspoken condition—to be white.

If tomorrow my child, my husband, or I am attacked, who will be responsible?

The perpetrators?

The media that fuels fear?

Or the silence that allows this hatred to grow?

I am writing to you not in anger, but in fear, pain, and hope—hope that our leaders will remember that Australia belongs to all of us who call it home, who live by its laws, and who believe in its values.

I am not asking for special treatment.

I am asking for safety, dignity, and reassurance—for my children, for my family, and for others like us.

Please ensure that no Australian is made to feel unsafe because of who they are, or more precisely, because their colour.

I want to thank that constituent, that extraordinary member of our community, and I hear that plea, and this parliament needs to hear it too and welcome diversity, welcome migrants and celebrate our wonderful multicultural community.

I know that, over recent months, the Kurdish community in Australia has been watching in horror as war has swept the region. I want them to know that their plight has not been forgotten. It has not been ignored or overlooked. Right now, there's a continuing and unacceptable siege in Kobani, a city in northern Syria. It's been cut off for months. It's a Kurdish-majority city with other displaced peoples in it. We've heard from people about the humanitarian catastrophe occurring there—the lack of medicine, food is scarce, power is cut off, communications are broken. People in Australia from the community are desperately trying to find out whether their loved ones and friends are safe. Only a decade ago, Kobani was the turning point in the fight against ISIS, when the people of Kobani held firm and, against thousands of ISIS fighters, broke the back of that toxic organisation, and they started the long march to push it back. That history is still fresh in the minds of the people in Kobani and their relatives here. The graves marking the 2,000 who lost their lives are still new. Both the military and humanitarian sieges on Kobani are happening now, so let's be honest to that history—that bravery of fighting ISIS. Let's not wash it out. Let's not abandon those who fought for the values we would want to fight for. Let's demand access to food, the lifting of the siege and the respect of the community there.

I also see that the Kurdish communities in Iran are being targeted, and the wicked regime in Iran is using the cover of US and Israeli bombings to do that. That follows an historic agreement from five major organisations representing Kurds in Iran to form a coalition to resist the regime in Tehran that has oppressed them and their communities for decades and to secure basic rights for Kurdish people within a decentralised and democratic Iran. One of the leaders of that alliance said this—they said it very recently:

We see from the experiences of the wars occurring in the Middle East that the politics of external powers do not serve the people and are only in the interest of their own authority. Because of that self-interested politics, the people of the region, and especially the people of Kurdistan, experienced very heavy suffering.

Let's hear more of those voices calling for bravery, I might say, across the region. Whether it's in Turkiye or Assyria or Iran, Kurdish people can continue to struggle for identity, for freedom and for cultural survival, and, now more than ever, they deserve our solidarity.

Australia is in the middle of a some global arms race on data centres. We're already the top five locations in the world and one of the fastest-growing, and it's unregulated and it's dangerous and it's designed to profit billionaires but potentially beggar communities, strip-out our assets and see Australians struggle to pay their power bills. A report by Baringa consultants for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation finds that, by 2035—and that's not that far away—data centre growth could increase wholesale electricity prices by 26 per cent in my home state of New South Wales or even by almost a quarter in Victoria, primarily driven by a need for more expensive gas beacon generation. We need a plan to deal with this. Who should we be prioritising for access to cheap power—multibillionaires and foreign corporations or people in Australia who desperately need electricity at a price that they can accept? Data centre demand in Sydney alone is forecast to have a massive call on our city's water supplies—some 250 megalitres a day, just for the data centres in Sydney by 2035. That's roughly the equivalent of Canberra's entire drinking water supply. These data centres are sucking up our power, they're sucking up our land, and they're sucking up our water to feed and fuel billionaire profits. It's about time we had a policy to control them, to regulate them and to make sure they're built in the national interest, not in the interest of some offshore bloodsucking billionaire.