Page 3071 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 17 October 2007
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In the context of poverty, we recognise that there are people who are suffering social isolation. What we need to do is get those services out there so that these people do not suffer social isolation—so that they do not have the imperative to stay in their own home. But I reject Mrs Dunne’s assertions. As I said before, 50 per cent of our students travel on route services. The challenge for us is to make sure that the school bus runs and the route services actually work in concert—that they do not work independently of one another, which has been hitherto the case.
We recognise that in our attack on poverty. This government is fully aware of it. In Anti-Poverty Week we, in each of our portfolios, are addressing issues to do with poverty. In mine I have two areas of absolute concern. One is the public transport issue. I have impressed upon our ACTION people that that is a priority for the government. The other one is in multicultural affairs. Do you know who suffer poverty the most? Refugees.
The Sudanese refugees are the most recent bunch of people from overseas who have been targeted for vilification, discrimination and all manner of other things—put up before the rest of the community as something different. This is absolutely unacceptable. These folks are running away from violence. They come to our shores; they come to our welcoming city. We try to extend a helping hand and the hand of welcome through places like Companion House, the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the ethnic school languages program, the migrant resource centre and our health services. We do a great job, only to find the federal minister plucking them out of the air and suggesting that they cannot assimilate into our society.
The federal minister’s political predecessors did the same thing in the 1850s with the Chinese. They have done the same thing with the Iraqi and Iranian refugees, the Pakistani refugees and the Vietnamese boat people—all in their turn. What was the most recent group before the Sudanese? Muslims. They were held up as pariahs. They were held up and vilified by this federal government. This particular government—the Jon Stanhope government—went in to bat and fought for this thing in ministerial councils. We thought we had got somewhere with Minister Andrews, but clearly we have not.
Now we find we have the battle again on another front because there is an election. We have got Mr Howard, Mr Andrews, Mr Abbott and the rest of the gang of four saying, “We have to keep this nation in a state of fear; therefore the populace will depend upon us to protect them from this horrible bunch of people.” I am reminded of the numbers of Vietnamese boat people and Afghan boat people. I think that in one of the years when the John Howard fear campaign was at its height we had something like 4,000 people come to our shores—4,000 people, two-thirds of whom were adults. You do not have a family putting a kid on a leaky boat and coming to our shores unless they are really running away from something. The numbers are terribly small.
The same thing is happening with the Sudanese—because they look different and because a lot of them are Muslims. They have committed two crimes. They have come from North Africa and they look different from everybody else; and they are Muslims. Therefore they must be a threat to this country! What an appalling state of
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