Page 1809 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 8 June 2016
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When we consider this motion this morning, I encourage all members to consider Hashmat and Theo—two men who arrived in Canberra with no English skills, and who have made a significant contribution to the rich diversity of the ACT. Hashmat and Theo did not simply “languish in unemployment queues”, to use the words of Minister Dutton: words which were not condemned by our Prime Minister. These individuals—our neighbours, our friends—deserve our respect, our gratitude and our welcome. Canberra is greater for their contribution, and the contribution of the many men and women whom we should all be mindful of on 20 June, World Refugee Day.
I again thank Mr Hinder for bringing the motion to the Assembly today. I support the motion. I was pleased to hear Mrs Jones confirm her bipartisan support for continuing the work of the ACT government in making the ACT a refugee welcome zone, so that it is not just ink on paper but so that we can make it as inclusive an environment as we possibly can for refugees and migrants in our city.
MR DOSZPOT (Molonglo) (11.45): I welcome the opportunity to speak about World Refugee Day, which will occur on 20 June. While I believe, as a refugee myself, that it is important to recognise such days and to highlight the valuable contribution refugees make and have made to Australia, it is regrettable that Mr Hinder has in fact done little of that. So I do welcome the opportunity to speak about World Refugee Day, which will occur on 20 June.
The intent of World Refugee Day is to highlight and raise awareness of the predicament that current refugees face every day, and to recognise the contributions of the millions of refugees that have been accepted into their various new homelands all over the world. What Mr Hinder has done here is shameful and dishonours the intent of World Refugee Day with political posturing.
For my part I would like to pay homage to the memory of the refugees who have been so welcomed into the community, many of whom have in turn made significant contributions to their adopted homeland, Australia, over the past century. My parents and I, as an eight-year-old, were refugees from then communist Hungary. We escaped from Hungary in January 1957 and after many months in various refugee camps around Yugoslavia we were accepted by the Australian government as refugees in September 1957.
Like so many who arrived in Australia in the postwar period, my family came to avoid religious and political persecution and in search of a better life. Australia provided an answer to both of these desires. We came to Australia to escape a communist regime under which we were prevented from exercising freedom of speech and freedom of worship.
My father, who was a tradesman and a Catholic youth leader, was imprisoned by the then Hungarian communist regime for two years for daring to question the authorities when they were persecuting the church and impinging upon people’s fundamental freedoms. Many of us here share a common bond of having been refugees or migrants, and all of us or our families here share the migrant experience, the pain and uncertainty of leaving our country of birth behind, and eventually becoming
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