

THE HON BILL SHORTEN MP  LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION  MEMBER FOR MARIBYRNONG

E&OE TRANSCRIPT   DOORSTOP  SUNDAY, 26 JANUARY 2014  MELBOURNE

SUBJECTS: Australia Day; Australian Citizenship; Success of immigration  and multiculturalism in Australia; Liberal Senator's cynical politics on  Australia Day

BILL SHORTEN, LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION: It’s great to be in the western  suburbs of Melbourne sharing what, perhaps after my childrens' birthdays and  Christmas Day, is unarguably the best day of the year. Many of us in this country are  Australians by birth, but today, tens of thousands of people are becoming  Australians by choice. And it’s a humbling experience to realise that around  Australia, so many people born in other countries are leaving the countries where  they grew up, the songs and music they used to know - the school children they  used to play with, and they’ve come to a faraway land making this country an even  better country.

Today is all about recognising the contribution of our Indigenous Australians, the  oldest culture in Australia, combined with some of the newest Australians. It is a  great day and I am particularly pleased with the choice of Adam Goodes as  Australian of the Year. He is a role model, not just for Indigenous young people, but  for all young people. He is a role model not just for Indigenous Australians, but for  all Australians. Today is the day where we recognise that immigration has been a  success in this country; we are one of the most multicultural countries in the world  with over one in every four Aussies born overseas. This is a great country, but it’s  been made great because of the contribution not just of Indigenous Australians, not  just because of the English, but because of all the countries of the world and all the  people that make Australia their home.  Today’s the day for great celebrating that so  many people are joining themselves to the Australian story and making us all  stronger for it.

Happy to take questions.

JOURNALIST:  Mr Shorten, you spoke about the need for compassion and for  Australians to embrace multiculturalism, that doesn’t gel particularly well with our  current policy of asylum seekers and offshore processing, does it?

SHORTEN: Today is the day to recognise that what unites us is greater than what  divides us. Australia is at its best when we are a generous and tolerant nation. In all  of our suburban streets and streets in our country towns we don’t really care where  our neighbours come from, we just care that they’re good neighbours - we want to  look after them and they want to look after us. Today is the day where we can  recommit to the benefits of immigration, where we recognise that Australia’s  greatest days are when we include people, not exclude people, both in the past and  in the future.

Today’s the day where we can say in a bipartisan fashion, let’s rectify the wrong of  not having Indigenous Australians in our Constitution. Today’s the day where all  Australians, doesn’t matter what your politics, doesn’t matter what football team you  barrack for, what state you live in - today’s the day we should say, enough is  enough, let’s recognise Indigenous Australians in our Constitution. This is a cause for  celebration, one which will be embraced by our newest Australians as well as looked  on by pride by Australia's oldest inhabitants.

JOURNALIST: So many people here at Brimbank are from Sudan or South Sudan  and have waited a long time to become Australian citizens, some of them for ten  years. Do you think that’s too long for people who are fleeing war to become  Australian citizens?

SHORTEN:  No person in the world should ever have to leave their own country  because of fear of persecution, but Australia should be a country that opens its arms  out to people. Some of the world’s refugees that have come to Australia have  become some of our most successful entrepreneurs; it’s the night shifts, it’s the late  shifts, it’s the stacking of shelves, it’s opening the milk bars, the market gardens -  the entrepreneurial businesses. Australia’s immigrants have added much more to  Australia than they’ve ever taken. So we’re lucky to get people, even if they didn’t  want to be in the situations they were in at home, we should be respectful of the  fact that people see in Australia the best hope in the world.

JOURNALIST:  What do you make of calls by some Liberal Senators that migrants  should learn English as their first language to be spoken in the community?

SHORTEN: It’s groundhog day that certain people on the right-wing of the Liberal  Party look at Australia’s immigration success and want to make contributions which I  don’t think are particularly helpful. All migrants in Australia want to learn to speak  English - I’m not splitting any atom declaring that. But what we should also  recognise with our migrants is that the more jobs that we can encourage them to  take up, the more we can encourage well-resourced schools to help their kids, they  will do as well as they can. Today’s not a day for simplistic stereotyping of  immigrants - in my experience there’s not a single immigrant that comes to Australia  that is not hungry to succeed to make their family do better, but also to make their  new adopted homeland be a better country than it already is.



Thanks very much.

ENDS

