The Hon Dr Anne Aly MP
Minister for Small Business,
Minister for International Development,
Minister for Multicultural Affairs

MINISTER DR ANNE ALY: Good afternoon, everyone.

I will thank Aunty Violet in her absence for that most beautiful Welcome to Country. I too would also like to acknowledge the Ngunnawal people, the traditional custodians of the lands on which we meet here today, and I pay my respects to elders past and present and extend that respect to any First Nations people who are with us here today. I'd also like to make a few acknowledgements, if I may. Her Excellency the Honourable Sam Mostyn AC, Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia, my colleague and friend, Ms. Alicia Payne, MP -oh there you are- Member for Canberra, Vivian Nguyen, the Chair of the Victorian Multicultural Commission, Karen Gulick, the Acting Interim Regional Representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Canberra, and their Excellencies, the High Commissioner for Canada, which is where my husband is from, and the Ambassadors for Norway and the Netherlands. Welcome all. Thank you also to the Director-General of the National Archives of Australia, Simon Froude and his team for this incredibly important and special event commemorating and recognising Refugee Week.

Now, I understand that the National Archives now holds around 45 million records. That's pretty huge. Records that represent a timeline of Australia's history and certainly provide us with a unique lens through which to view our shared history. Among those archives, many, many stories of those who have come from across the seas and built new lives here in Australia. We've been very fortunate to view some of those records here today. But they aren't just interesting stories, and they aren't just photos, and they aren't just tangible records of history. They are much more than that. Much, much more than that. They speak to the character of our nation, of who we are and of what we aspire to be.

Now, after having a look at those records, I was just reminded of when my father passed away 10 years ago, and we found our records of coming to Australia. I spent hours, hours just poring over them. A letter from the Australian Embassy, our first photo as a family for our passport. A letter from my father's employer, [indistinct], which was an engineering company in Alexandria, saying how long he had worked there for and that he was leaving on the date of 29 May, that he was leaving to immigrate to Australia. Our landing documents. And it was much more than just documents I held in my hands, just like looking through those documents here now with [indistinct] of his family's arrival, there is a feeling that's kind of indescribable, isn't it? It's that feeling that these aren't just papers, but they are something much, much more that are part of, not my journey, or not my parents’ journey, or not my father's journey, but the journey of a nation, the journey of a nation together. Those records tell us also about ourselves as Australians, perhaps even more so than they do about the incredible stories of the individuals and families, many of whom took a perilous journey across the seas, fleeing conflict, persecution, to find a new home and build a new home here in Australia.

It's fitting that, as Her Excellency said, that we mark Refugee Week, we also mark the 50th anniversary of Vietnamese settlement in Australia. The settlement of Vietnamese, boat people as they were known then, in Australia following the Vietnam War in 1975, was no less than a watershed moment in Australian history. Because think about this, the White Australia policy had not quite been fully dismantled at that time, had not quite been fully dismantled. And the arrival of Vietnamese refugees tested our nation. It tested us as a country, challenged us in ways that we had not been challenged before, particularly as a nation that had, by and large, been fearful of mass immigration from our Asian neighbours. Our anxious borders were a key feature of our discourse, of the Australian discourse, a key feature of our national identity. And let's face it, Australia was not always the welcoming place that we sing about in our national anthem for those who've come across the seas with boundless plans to share. But Australia met the challenge, and that was in no small measure due to the wonderful work of community organisations like St Vincent de Paul Society and the Brotherhood of St Laurence that provided and continue to provide vital settlement supports to migrants and refugees. But it was also due to the Vietnamese refugees, whose remarkable example of resilience has contributed significantly to the great success of the Vietnamese community in Australia across economic, social and political life.

Now, I stand before you here today as the Minister of the Crown who migrated to Australia at the age of two. My father was a bus driver. He trained as an engineer, but he could not work as an engineer in Australia, and so he was a bus driver. But I was born in a country where the daughter of a bus driver could only ever hope to be the daughter of a bus driver. Among my parliamentary colleagues today are the Member for Fowler, Dai Le, herself a refugee from Vietnam, the Member for Reid, Sally Sitou, the daughter of refugees from Laos. And in Western Australia, my friend, the Honourable Ayor Makur Chuot, a member of the Upper House and the first ever South Sudanese person elected to any parliament in Australia, was born in a refugee camp.

Refugee Week is an opportunity to reflect not just on the contributions of refugees and what those contributions have made to Australia, but also, I think, to recognise and understand their dreams, their challenges and their successes. And importantly, also to reflect on this: we are who we are today as a nation because of their challenges and their successes. We are privileged to share this land with the oldest living culture in the world. Our national identity is grounded in 65,000 years of First Nations history, over 200 years of immigration, and it is enriched by the more than 985,000 refugees and humanitarian entrants that have successfully settled here since the end of the Second World War. So, I want to end by thanking all of the community leaders here, the volunteers and organisations who have devoted their time and their passion to making Australia a country that shares its boundless claims. To those who have made the journey to a new home, and to those who have helped make Australia home, I say thank you.

[ENDS]