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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 14 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 4345 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

The other parts of the motion are to do with bashing the federal government and pushing an agenda which Bob Brown is pushing federally and which the left wing of the Labor Party, led by Carmen Lawrence, is now trying to push.

The ACT has a very proud record in terms of supporting refugees. We supported the Kosovo refugees. We support victims of torture. I remember as the relevant minister giving increasing amounts of funding to an organisation that looks after refugees who are victims of torture by horrible regimes across the world. I am sure that the current government is continuing to do that. I have not heard any complaints yet. I would hope that it will continue to do so.

Refugees-indeed, anyone who is here legally and who needs a helping hand-are welcome in the ACT and we do not need to go through any stunts or anything like that to make that known. The ACT has a very proud record going back many years of welcoming refugees. In fact, I doubt that I would be here were it not for the generosity of a local lady who organised a party with local girls to meet a batch of Polish refugees, including my father. That is where my parents met. Even though they were all Catholics, the party was organised on behalf of the Anglican Bishop of Goulburn and Canberra. That was in the late 1940s or whatever.

We have had a consistent history in the ACT of being most welcoming to refugees, but this is not an easy issue. Mr Pratt has ably indicated the various problems. (Extension of time granted.) The federal government is working through a very difficult situation. It is tragic when a boat with 350 people on board sinks and they drown, just as tragic as the problems that a lot of these people have actually faced in their own countries through the actions of the vicious regimes that cause the refugee problems.

In fact, lots of refugee problems have been caused deliberately. The tragic plight of the Palestinians has been caused largely by a lot of the Arab states refusing to do anything to assist in their rehabilitation and resettlement and keeping them in refugee camps as a means of getting at Israel. That bred generations of people in hopeless situations and is one of the many reasons for continuing trouble in that part of the world. If other states in this world were reasonable, we would not have refugees. We had lots of refugees trying to leave the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, but not many people were trying to get in there. We do have lots of people trying to reach here. Lots of people are trying to get out of vicious countries.

Mr Pratt made comments in relation to letting us do what we can as a player in the international field to improve conditions in other countries, perhaps spend a bit more effort on doing that, and address the long-term problems that cause people to become refugees, but there are no easy answers. I agree with Mrs Cross that the federal government generally is doing a pretty good job in this regard. It is certainly open to ways in which it can be improved.

The system is not perfect, but to try to equate poor Philip Ruddock and the very decent immigration officials, members of the Australian Defence Force and other federal public servants involved in this regard with some kind of monster and paint them as horrible people akin to NKVD border guards, Gestapo Nazis or whatever is quite obscene. They are decent Australians who are trying to do a difficult job. You might not agree with them, you might think that they could do it better and you might strongly disagree with

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