Multiculturalism

The Hon. H.J. GUMBYS (15:22): I rise today to speak about multiculturalism and the kind of state South Australia is and is destined to become. In 1966, South Australia was the first jurisdiction in Australia to prohibit racial discrimination. In 1975, the Dunstan Labor government established the ethnic affairs branch of the Department of the Premier and Cabinet. Those reforms carried a clear conviction: that people could belong fully to South Australia without first becoming less of themselves.

Across Australia we have political parties that are presenting cultural difference as a source of national decline. We hear the phrases 'Australian culture' and 'handouts, but public support does not suddenly become a handout because the people receiving it speak another language or arrive here more recently.

Australian culture? Whose culture? From which year? Frozen at what point in our history? This argument depends upon the myth that Australia once possessed a single, settled identity, and that social peace can be recovered by returning to it. What exactly are Australians being asked to return to? To the White Australia policy? To years when migrants were recruited for their labour, but expected to conceal their language? To a time where a surname could close a door, an accent could diminish a person's authority and belonging depended upon becoming less visible? That country deserves no revival.

First Nations cultures have endured here for tens of thousands of years. Colonisation brought peoples from across the British Isles; later generations arrived from every region of the world. Each inherited an unfinished country and added to it. The monocultural Australia imagined by the far right never existed. It survives because anxiety is easier to exploit when someone else can be blamed.

Nonetheless, some anxiety is real. Families are struggling with housing, insecure work and cost-of-living pressure. Young people are questioning whether they will enjoy the stability their parents expected. Labor understands that those conditions must be answered with homes, wages, public services and economic security.

The politics of division offers something cheaper: take a real frustration, find a convenient neighbour and tell people that neighbour is the reason life has become harder. This is by no means a new phenomenon. It is a strategy that has been used throughout history to divide people and is readily taken up by those seeking that division. Serious politics asks more of us. It gives people a common purpose large enough to hold all of their differences. Diversity gives a society energy when its institutions allow everyone to participate.

During the winter recess, I had the opportunity to experience and appreciate the rich tapestry that is South Australia's multicultural communities. I was welcomed by, and shared food with, refugees and migrant communities originating from South Sudan, Colombia, Germany, Venezuela, Peru, Pakistan, Ukraine, Chile and India. I was extremely honoured to be invited by the Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Nadia Clancy, to emcee a Latin American community celebration in the Balcony Room.

Having a Lithuanian father, I was moved deeply in attending the Baltic Way Freedom Concert. This concert performance, representing the nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, commemorated the Baltic Way or Baltic Chain protest, where, in August 1989, approximately two million people linked hands in silent defiance of Soviet occupation and oppression. Stretching 675 kilometres and spanning the three nations, this visually stunning show of solidarity was the catalyst for the eventual independence of the three countries, closely followed by Poland, the birthplace of my maternal grandfather.

Behind each occasion and each event were people preserving language and memory, caring for older generations and welcoming new arrivals. Much of that work is voluntary. None of it weakens Australia. It is Australia. I was born in this country, the son of a migrant and a refugee. My parents came to Australia from somewhere else. My family story is one among thousands. It shapes the seriousness with which I approach this matter. Multiculturalism is not an apology for difference, and it is not a system of special favours. It is equal citizenship, mutual responsibility and the confidence that people do not need to erase their histories in order to share a future.

A smaller state asks people to narrow themselves before they can belong. A confident state draws on the full measure of its people. When I hear calls to go back to something simpler, I ask: 'Back to what exactly?' The fact is, a monoculture never existed. There is no simpler South Australia waiting for us in the past. There is only a lesser one, not the richer version that we are moving towards.