​​​​MINISTER DR ANNE ALY: Good morning, everybody.

Can I start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the lands on which we meet today, the Wiradjuri people and Bunurong peoples and I acknowledge their elders past and present and any other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people here today.

Thank you to Community Hubs Australia for this kind invitation to speak. And it’s actually my first major public speaking engagement since being appointed as the Minister for Multicultural Affairs earlier this month. One of the most exciting things about being appointed in this particular ministerial role is that I get to meet old friends and new, and I look forward to meeting many, many new friends, along with the ones that I’ve worked with over the last 30 years of my life in the field of multicultural affairs.

I’d especially like to thank the chair, Sonja Hood. Now, I know Sonja isn’t here today, but Sonja is one of those old friends who I’ve met many times with over the past nine years talking about community hubs and, indeed, how we can bring them to WA. And also, to chief executive Bec Kotow, not only for this opportunity but also for your leadership of this important organisation that really is making a huge difference in the lives of people who have come to Australia and who are making Australia their home.

Can I also say a big hello to CHA’s partners, many of them who are here today, and to also thank you for your support and the support that you give to improving settlement experiences of migrant and humanitarian entrants.

Let me just say I’m incredibly honoured to be given the three portfolios that I have in Small Business, International Development and Multicultural Affairs and to have the opportunity to frame those three portfolios as a part of the Australian story, as part of a story that is about aspiration, that is about success and that, above all, is about giving and giving back and giving to community.

I know each and every one of us has a story, a history and a tradition that together comes together and enriches our modern multicultural Australia. So, I wanted to share with you my story. At this point I can take the glasses off.

So, I was born in Egypt, quite a long time ago now, and my father, Mahmoud, was an engineer and my mother, Hamida, a nurse. And they met in Alexandria, introduced to each other by their Greek neighbour, because Alexandria had a very rich Greek and Mediterranean history. And then in 1969, which gives you an idea of how old I am – that does not leave this room – my parents decided that they wanted to migrate from Egypt, and they applied for Canada and they applied for Australia.

The Australian offer came first, so they dressed my sister and I up in our best clothes and they took extra time to put our hair up in little pigtails and wash our faces and make us look nice and clean and neat so that the Australian officials would say yes and say, “Look at these adorable children. Of course you can come to Australia.” I was two years old, and my sister was 18 months older than me.

So, we got on the train from Alexandria to Cairo to meet with the Australian official to have our interview to come to Australia. Now, according to my mother – this is her account of things – I was not a very well-behaved child, and upon leaving the meeting with this official my mother was devastated and inconsolable and just broke down in tears because, according to my mother, I was not a well-behaved child. I was screaming and jumping around and climbing all over the place and not being a very well-behaved child.

And so, she just broke down into tears, and my father looked at her and he said, “What are you crying – why are you crying?” And my mother said, “There’s no way – there is absolutely no way – Australia will accept us for immigration, because of her. Did you not see the way that she behaved?” And my father just smiled, and he said, “Don’t worry. I researched all about Australia. It’s where they used to send criminals, so she’ll fit right in.”

Now, I often think about those first few months and days and years of my parents coming to Australia. They landed at the Bonegilla Migrant Centre in Albury-Wodonga, and they spent around three weeks or four weeks there before my father was given work on a factory floor in Sydney. My mother followed about a few days later with both my sister and my suffering from measles.

Our first home was a room that we rented with a Greek family in the Inner West in Sydney. Our second home was a room that we rented with another Greek family in the Inner West in Sydney. And I think about how difficult it must have been for my parents who didn’t speak English, for my mum especially, who had come from these, you know, these cities, these cosmopolitan cities of Cairo and Alexandria and to this sparse land where the food was so strange and she couldn’t understand the language and she had these two children, two little girls, to raise.

My mum tells me that when they landed at Bonegilla one of the first things that they were given, they were given $3 a week to spend as part of their settlement program. And the first thing that she did was went out and bought us each jackets because the weather was so different, and it was so cold.

And sometimes I talk to my mother about what it was like in those first few months and those first few years of arriving to such a strange country so far away from their family and their friends and where they were raised, where there is strange food and strange language and where, you know, my father, who was an engineer, took a job on the factory floor and later worked as a bus driver just to put a roof over our heads and the shame that that brought to the family. And where my mother, who was a qualified nurse, took a job looking after an elderly lady, Mrs T, who we ended up living with because it meant that we had some accommodation while we were here as well. And I often think about what kind of supports might have made her life, my mum’s life and my dad’s life just a little bit easier, just a bit easier in those first few months and those first few years.

But that’s my story, and I stand before you now as a person of Egyptian heritage, first Muslim woman elected to the Parliament in 2016, and appointed to the Ministry in 2022, and now appointed to the Cabinet. So, I don’t think that meeting did much damage, do you?

That’s why I encourage children now to just be boisterous and naughty, you know. They might grow up to be the next Prime Minister.

The parliament that I’m in today looks so different from the Parliament that I was first elected to in 2016. I don’t think I could ever have imagined how culturally and linguistically diverse our parliament could become in just nine years of – nine years’ time. And I think that gives us as a Government a truly unique perspective, one that identifies with the experiences of countless families, the kinds of families that CHA supports.

My journey is still a journey in progress and my experiences as a migrant, not just the child of a migrant but, in effect, a migrant myself is why I’m so excited to take on this portfolio. That I can use my experience to help make a difference to the lives of others, which is , as I look around this room, which is knowing what I know about Community Hubs Australia, which is I know is at the heart of everything you do as well – that opportunity to make a difference to lives. And for that I appreciate you and I thank you.

Now, the thing is that governments can only do so much, but in so many instances it’s the kind of grassroots connections into communities that has a huge impact on new arrivals and ensuring that they have that settlement experience in the way that my parents had some of a settlement experience but not the kind of full settlement experience that I think would have made a huge difference to them.

As a Government that’s committed to diversity and inclusion and providing a fair go for all, we highly value the work of CHA and the work that all of you do through the National Community Hubs Program and commend you on your own comprehensive program with a strong focus on humanitarian entrants and other vulnerable migrants.

You know, the importance of community, particularly in the journey of settlement for a lot of migrants is one that I don’t think can be underestimated. And I think that if new arrivals and migrants, particularly those who are coming from torture and trauma backgrounds, but even those who – you know, it’s traumatic to leave your family and your friends and everything that you know behind and come to a completely different country. If there is an experience of community very early on and a positive experience of community very early on, I think that makes a huge difference to their journey and to the lives of the children as well and what’s passed on.

For us, I remember this: in 1973 we moved from Sydney to Brisbane and my parents bought a house in Brisbane, and then came the floods in 1974. Lots of people in this room look like they don’t remember them. But for those who do, the 1974 floods was the first time that my family, my parents, had ever seen rain so thick and so hard that it hit the wall sideways. They’d never seen rain like that, not in a place like Egypt. You don’t get rain like that.

The floods came to our home, and we became a statistic. We had to leave everything that my parents had worked for, everything that made their existence in Australia a life in Australia. Those things that, you know, we often take for granted – your washing machine, your dryer, your furniture, the things that make a house into a home. Had to leave all of that behind. But it was actually out of that tragedy of the floods that we found community.

And I remember this starkly, because I remember leaving home, I remember going to shelter with my parents, and I remember feeling, possibly for the first time, Australian. Ironic that out of a tragedy came this sense of a community that I had felt was lacking and my parents had felt was lacking. I remember feeling Australian.

And, in fact, those people who reached out and helped us became lifelong friends and lifelong fixtures in our lives. Mrs Redcliffe was one of them. She was an elderly lady who came and helped us as part of the community. When we moved back to Sydney she would come and visit us during school holidays. She came to all our weddings. She was there right through our lives as we grew up. And to me that instance, that part of my family’s history and my family’s story that speaks to the importance of community and the impact that community has is the essence of what you do. It really underpins what you do in bringing community to those families, in bringing community to the settlement experience and bringing community to the migrant experience.

And as somebody who has experienced that myself, I cannot express to you the difference that that makes. I don’t have the words to express to you how that changed my family’s life and how you are changing lives through everything that you do.

I do hope that you recognise that, and I do hope that throughout the day you take the time to really let that sink in on your own and with each other, just how significant what you do is in the Australian story of so many migrants who come here and the difference that it makes. You make a difference. It made the difference to my parents, but here I am, some 50 years on from there and it’s still making a difference to me. It’s still making a difference to me.

Now as you know, we have made a commitment to you, recognising your efforts and your contributions. My colleague the Assistant Minister Julian Hill announced that a re-elected Albanese government would invest over $6.4 million for a further 25 Community Hubs. Now, that means there’ll be Community Hubs in Tasmania and the Northern Territory and regional Queensland. How amazing.

A really exciting opportunity, I think, to see your network expand into some new regions and providing even more families the support that they need, particularly I’m thinking in some of those regional areas. And I assure you that we’re working through the budget process now in order to deliver that funding to you.

Now, that’s in addition to our 2024 Budget measures, which committed to additional funding for conversational English classes at community hubs. Do we have any of the teachers here? Can I just put up my hand and say that I was also an English language teacher. And can I tell you, I taught at the adult migrant English program for many years, and do you know today that I will still walk through the street and someone will come and say hello to me and they’ll say, “You taught me English 30 years ago. Here’s my adult child I was pregnant with at the time.” And, in fact, the other day when I visited the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade there was a young woman there who said, “You know my father.” And I said, “Do I?” And she said, “His name is Adel.” I taught her father English when he first arrived in Australia.

So, the impact that you have, can I just give you a huge shoutout to all the English teachers out there for the huge impact that you have on the lives, particularly for women. In fact, my master’s degree was in Muslim women and their access to English language classes. You’re quite free to read it – it’s boring, but if you want a summary, I can give it to you. So huge, huge shoutout to the English language teachers out there who, I think, provide a really important service.

Now, I think that the commitments that the Albanese Labor Government has made to you all provides you with a high degree of confidence that we deeply appreciate you, we value the work that you do., we’re committed to long-term support and recognise how important the work that you do is. It’s so important that it has actually – the work that you do, Australia has, I believe, one of the most enviable international resettlement programs. It’s world- leading. And we continue to commit to providing 20,000 places per year within our humanitarian program. And, of course, all the work that you do has an important role in ensuring that those who come through the humanitarian program find a place and a home and a community.

What I want to say in conclusion is that first of all to wish you luck over the day. It’s one day, or is it two days?

SPEAKER: Two days.

MINISTER DR ANNE ALY: Two days of your conference. I hope that you take a lot out of it. I hope that you, you know, learn a lot from it. But I hope that it’s also an opportunity for you to just take a moment and congratulate each other and yourselves on the important work that you do and recognise for yourselves how important it is, the work that you do. Because we recognise how important it is. Our Government recognises how important it is. And I recognise how important it is. And I hope that I’ve been able to express that to you today through what I believe is a really important way of expressing and communicating through storytelling and through the sharing of stories. And I hope that you get an opportunity to share your stories as well over the next two days.

We’re going to continue as a government, and I’m going to continue to lean into your expertise to further improve our systems and to get from you the feedback that we need to make the process of resettlement as easy as possible and the welcome that we give to migrants and refugees an even warmer welcome.

The best system puts people firmly at the centre of everything, and together with organisations like CHA we can do that. We can continue to put people at the centre of everything and continue to grow a brighter future for all Australians. Creating that community through support, through friendship and through giving.

And so, for that I thank you, and I wish you all the best over the next two days.

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