Vamvakinou, Maria, MP

Ms VAMVAKINOU (Calwell) (11:14): I rise to speak against the Migration Legislation Amendment (Regional Processing Cohort) Bill 2016. I do so because I strongly believe that this bill has no policy value whatsoever other than to detract from the government's failure, after three years, to secure third-country resettlement options for the refugees on Manus and Nauru. I oppose this bill because, at heart, it is an appeasement and a dog whistle that simply goes too far in the wrong direction. In opposing it I am now drawing a line in the sand on an issue that has challenged, troubled and conflicted me for over a decade. I came into the Australian parliament during the 2001 'children overboard', Tampa election. It was an election that was largely fought at the expense of refugees and their children, an election where the government of the day unleashed a shameless campaign that broke with traditional bipartisanship and ruthlessly exploited an issue it knew would deliver it votes at the election. I well remember Tampa. I also remember as a candidate having to field questions about my own migrant background. There were many callers to my campaign office at that time wanting reassurance that I was not Arabic or Muslim. Such was the hysteria, that one caller demanded proof that I was not Muslim. When I said to him that my name was Maria he said: 'I did not ask you your name. I asked you if you were a Muslim.' It had been a long time since my own identity as an Australian had been challenged and I must say that it did shock me. It shocked me that I too was being hunted because I had a foreign-sounding name. It made me realise that the fight for an inclusive Australia can never be said to be won. It also taught me that appeasement and dog whistling, as it was then as it is today, are the single biggest threat to our social cohesion. Our social cohesion is the basis upon which we have built our country. Our greatest strength is our multicultural society. The Prime Minister is absolutely right when he says that—he is absolutely right. But, Prime Minister, our successful multicultural nation has been built by tolerance and inclusion, by access and equity, by political and community leadership that has worked to bring people together with courage and foresight, leadership that has rejected and defied dog whistling and appeasement, leadership that would have understood that the men, women and children on Nauru and Manus are not to blame. They are not a threat. They have failed. In fact, this government has failed, and anybody who supports this absurd thought-bubble of a bill has missed the point altogether. We are facing a global humanitarian crisis. It is a crisis that we need to deal with in a serious, thoughtful, humane and collective way. We do not deal with this crisis in this way. I am a migrant—I have said that many times in this place. My husband is a refugee from Cyprus. I proudly represent one of the most multicultural constituencies in Australia. The federal seat of Calwell is home to one of the largest Muslim communities in Australia. It is also home to the biggest emerging refugee community from Iraq, and that community is predominantly Christian. I have worked and continue to work very hard in my local community to build relationships and promote can social cohesion. In particular, in my electorate at this very minute we are receiving hundreds of refugees from Syria, and my own Iraqi community works hard not only to integrate itself into the broader community that has become its home but also to help those who are coming from Syria at this moment. I believe passionately in multiculturalism. I believe in an Australia that has an Indigenous inheritance, a country built by successive waves of migrants, my own parents included. I believe in an Australia that is compassionate, hardworking and fair, where the persecuted, the displaced and the stateless have in the past and will continue in the future to find sanctuary and understanding and be given a chance and an opportunity to build a new home and a future for themselves and for their children, a future that is safe from the horrors of war and violence. This is why I am drawing a line in the sand and opposing this bill. This bill goes too far. Its attempts to ban from ever visiting Australia those genuine refugees who go on to become citizens of other countries, all because they once came to this country seeking refuge, is ludicrous and offers no real solution to the global movement of people. There are, as my colleagues before me have said, 65 million people on the move globally. I understand, and we all understand, that we face a major humanitarian issue that is complex and challenging and one that we have to find a solution to. But this bill is not the solution. Labor recognise and understand the complexities and the challenges of the refugee issue, and we have supported the government in trying to deal with this issue. We have supported a policy that combines offshore processing and regional resettlement as a way of managing a process that is driven by circumstances, factors and forces beyond our control. We know that the people-smuggling business is a horrific trade in human trafficking, a cruel and ruthless exploitation of human anguish and desperation. We are all too familiar with the fact that hundreds and thousands of migrants and refugees have lost their lives or the lives of loved ones, drowning in our seas and in the Mediterranean. So we do support the government in its attempt to stop the people smugglers and to stop the deaths at sea. Let us have a look at those attempts and what they have in fact stopped. The turn-back policy that the government has championed has been effective. The 2015-16 summary statistics of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection stated that zero people-smuggling ventures reached Australia within that period. So, yes, that particular policy has been effective. I would say that the government would think that they had done a very good job. The job has done what was intended. So the question is, what is the actual purpose of this bill? In question time yesterday the Prime Minister said, amongst many other things that he said, that it is necessary in order to protect us from the huge number of people who will make their way across to our side of the world if the people smugglers get a whiff of any opportunity. The Prime Minister also told us in question time yesterday about his meetings with European leaders and the concerns they expressed to him about the tsunami of people who have flowed into Europe and who remain a threat to them and to us. I have been watching Europe for about a decade, and my response to that is that the Europeans have no-one to blame but themselves. If there are 65 million or so people on the move globally, we as an international community are to blame. We cannot deal with this issue by simply warning each other to stay vigilant and batten down the hatches. This is not a solution. This bill is certainly not a solution, and the Prime Minister in particular should be embarrassed about championing this pettiness. Let me remind the chamber that this country has been here before. There have been similar issues in decades past. However, we are a country that has a significant history of receiving and settling refugees. We have one of the largest numbers of refugee settlements per capita. Our settlement programs are deemed to be among world's best practice. We did not achieve this through pettiness and dog whistling. On the contrary: we achieved it in spite of the pettiness and dog whistling. In defending this bill, the government points out—again, amongst other things, because it is very hard to work out what exactly the point of the bill is—that this bill is not founded on fear. Perhaps not—perhaps that is true. But the government, through this bill, certainly seeks to exploit fear. A policy without a clear purpose runs the risk of becoming a device that serves deviant ends. And let me remind the Prime Minister that vindictive politics seldom makes for good policy. I oppose this bill because it fails to address in a meaningful and serious way a global problem that cannot be dealt with by focusing on the idea of keeping out or moving on. All this bill does is use innocent human beings as a political football in order to detract from the government's failure to fulfil the other part of its policy, and that is to secure third-country resettlement options for the people on Nauru and Manus.