Page 5125 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 17 November 2009
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these individuals is strengthened because of our firm partnerships with the community service providers and new and emerging multicultural groups. As a new minister having this in my department as one of my portfolios I look forward to working with the community sector and, indeed, our broad, multicultural sector to make refugees and new settlers to the area welcome, so they fit into our community and have access to all the services that they require, and actively engage and participate as members of the community.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (4.24): I thank Ms Le Couteur for bringing this issue forward, and it is a very important one. The history of our nation has been one of immigration. The history of the last 200-odd years in particular has been one of people coming to Australia, seeking freedom and seeking a better life for themselves and for their families. Many of these people who come to our shores are, indeed, refugees and asylum seekers.
I would like to pay tribute to those organisations here in the ACT who do support refugees and who do an outstanding job in doing that, and there is a number of them. There is the Canberra Refugee Support, St John’s, Kippax, Companion House, St Vincent De Paul, Red Cross, CatholicCare, and the Migrant and Refugee Settlement Service, amongst others. I would like to pay tribute to the volunteers, to those who put out the welcome mat for people who are often in very difficult circumstances, who have often left horrendous circumstances in their own nations and, in many cases, have no choice but to flee.
We have heard from Mr Doszpot about the experience of his family coming over from Hungary to Australia, seeking a better life. We in the Canberra Liberals believe absolutely in the need for us to be compassionate as a nation and as a city towards asylum seekers, towards refugees and, indeed, to welcome immigrants in whatever form.
It is worth, I think, just adding a few words in relation to the way that this issue sometimes plays out. When it comes to an orderly immigration program, people of goodwill can, indeed, disagree on what is the best way to effect that. I think that most Australians and most Canberrans would agree that we do need certain procedures for checking people who come into the country and to ensure that we protect our borders and that we have refugees settled and migrants settled in an orderly manner. I do not think there are too many people in our community who would argue otherwise. Sometimes we see serious disagreements about what is the best way to effect that.
Can I just put on the record that the concern that I have from time to time is that, in this process of looking for what are the best policy settings to ensure that we do not encourage people smugglers, that we have an orderly refugee settlement program and an orderly immigration program, it is important that we do not see a situation where the refugees themselves become demonised, where people who are seeking a better life for themselves and their families in some ways become demonised in the argument about what is the best policy to ensure that this is done in an orderly way and what is the best policy to ensure border protection for Australia.
I think from time to time we do see in this debate, unfortunately, the situation where those people who very often come from very desperate circumstances are in some
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