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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (25 June) . . Page.. 2117 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

contributed so much to our community. I suppose that I would not be here if it were not for a refugee, Mr Speaker. My father was in the first big batch of refugees after the war. He was a refugee because of what occurred in eastern Europe during the war, and he felt that he could not return to his country. He and his brother, Kasik, were in England and Scotland after the war. Kasik returned because he was, I think, a sergeant in the Polish Army. My father was a lieutenant. The Katyn Forest executions had occurred in 1940, where the Soviet Union had executed some 14,000 Polish Army officers. Consequently, a large number of former Polish Army officers who were in Britain did not return for fear of being executed. They were, in fact, refugees, because the Soviet Union had taken Poland into its sphere of influence and under its domination after World War II. So, a considerable number of refugees came out to Australia then.

Mr Kaine mentioned Australia of the 1930s and 1940s. Whilst I do not think any of us here were around then to experience that, I always recall the story my mother told me about when she announced to her family that she was marrying a Pole. That was not something that was done very much in those days because we were very much an Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Celtic community. When my mother accepted my father's proposal - I cannot remember who proposed to whom there, but it was back in 1950 - she told her family. One of the members of her family was her sister-in-law Dolly - Dolly Blake now. Dolly came from Coolamon. Uncle Dick married Dolly after World War I. She was the prettiest girl in Coolamon. Dolly, when told that my mother was marrying a Pole, said, "Which Mr Pole is that?". She had no real concept of the situation. But that was very typical of the times.

It is interesting to look, firstly, at the very good record Australia has in terms of refugees and just taking in people generally from overseas. I think the Chifley Government should be congratulated - indeed, Arthur Calwell richly deserves to receive the kudos - for that first great wave of post-war immigration. So many of those people were refugees. It is a proud tradition that has been continued by successive governments of all political persuasions.

Ms Reilly mentioned Victor. I have met Victor on many occasions. He was a refugee from a right-wing fascist dictatorship in Chile. There were further refugees in the late 1970s. There were refugees from a left-wing totalitarian regime, escaping from what was formerly South Vietnam. Many of those people - the boat people - came out to Australia then. A lot of countries did not want them. But Australia, at that time under Malcolm Fraser, a Liberal Prime Minister, had a very proud record in terms of those refugees. It continued with successive governments into the 1980s and 1990s. Australia still takes many refugees. We have an excellent record in terms of our attitude to taking displaced and oppressed people from overseas and welcoming them into our home and our hearts. They certainly have responded as excellent citizens. As Mr Kaine has so correctly said, they have greatly enriched this nation.

In the ACT, we have just a local government, but - I think I speak for both sides of the house here - we are pleased to do what we can to assist refugees. Indeed, a lot of assistance is given, in cash, in kind and in other forms of support, to the Ethnic Communities Council and its offshoots. It does a lot of work with new migrants and new refugees. A more recent program that springs to mind is Transact, which helps

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