ADJOURNMENT

Senator GHOSH (Western Australia) (17:27): I rise this evening to talk about values in Australia—those values that represent the best of our country. As we see around the world the nativist and racist sentiments that have gained traction in political systems and the appeal and willingness to exploit anti-immigrant and antimulticultural views, we must reflect on what makes this country great.

In Australia, too, we have seen political parties and political actors attempt to exploit concerns about migration and multiculturalism for base political gain. We see that in the existence and now the continuation of the party of One Nation. But the danger to our country is not just their electoral success; it is the temptation for mainstream political parties to adopt their language, validate their premises and normalise their politics.

Of course the Australian story is always more complicated, and it is potentially more hopeful. Concern about the level of migration is not the same as the rejection of migrants. Anxiety about housing is not the same as hostility to multiculturalism.

We should be careful not to treat every concern about migration as an equivalent to racism, but we should be equally careful not to allow legitimate concerns about housing, infrastructure or services to become a permission slip for racists. Many groups in Australia, vital members of our community, feel unjustifiably scapegoated at the moment. They feel that their sense of belonging to our country is somehow contingent or impermanent.

There is a risk in this moment that we lose Australia's pluralism—one of the most important, long-term, sustainable and renewable national assets that we possess. The economic benefits of multiculturalism and migration are well established. Migrants have filled skill gaps, have contributed to productivity, are more innovative—and more dedicated in many ways—and have contributed tax revenue in this country over generations.

But there is also something dispiriting about defending multiculturalism by calculating its economic return. Migrants should not have to earn their place in Australian society by producing a sufficiently impressive profit-and-loss sheet. The case for a multicultural Australia is larger than economics.

It is about what kind of country we are and what kind of country we want to be and become. What then do we mean when we talk about multicultural values or the values of our communities? We mean the values that Australia's many communities carry with them from every corner of the world and, more importantly, the values that recur across those communities regardless of where they started.

When I think about multicultural values, I don't have to look very far. I think about my parents, who migrated from India and were welcomed by the spirit of generosity that defines Australia. I think about the faith they placed in education, I think about the importance they place on family and I think about how hard they've worked, how willing they were to contribute to our society and how important it was to them to feel part of the community—a community that they have continued to help build and contribute to.

Above all, when it comes to multicultural values, I think about optimism. I think about the optimism to make a life in a country far from one you once knew. Migration is, almost by definition, an act of optimism.

You do not leave behind the familiar and begin again somewhere else unless you believe that your future can be better than your past. Australia's success will continue to be built as a multicultural community. If we were ever to attempt to create a monoculture, as if that were even possible, Australia would be poorer in every sense.

There is no older, purer Australia waiting for us to return to. There is only the Australia we have built together and the Australia we choose to build next. For me, there could hardly be a better expression of that optimism than Australia's multicultural story—every family that came here believing they could build something better, every parent who sacrificed for a child so that they had opportunities that they didn't have themselves.

I'm proud of my parents, I'm proud of the communities represented across this country and in this parliament, and I am optimistic about Australia because I know that our future does not require us to choose between different histories. Those histories are part of the same Australian story. (Time expired)