The suburban streets and shopping centres of Box Hill, Mount Waverley, Oakleigh, Clayton and Burwood in Victoria are a testament to the success of multiculturalism in Australia and the hard work and strong family values of our diverse community. These once sleepy suburbs are thriving centres of commerce, food and culture with Chinese, Greek and Indian small businesses providing great services to the whole community.
These are the suburbs that make up the federal electorate of Chisholm, the place where I have lived my whole life, where I am raising my family and that I hope to represent in Parliament. The success of our community has been hard won by the people who moved here from across the globe, and while many Australians accept and embrace multiculturalism, we are far from perfect and many people who move to Australia still face barriers and prejudice which they should not have to endure.
My parents migrated to Australia from Italy in the 1960s, leaving behind friends, family and everything familiar. They came from poverty and built a life for themselves in Australia, working in factories seven days a week. They didn’t further their own education. Instead, they embraced a lifetime of manual labour so that they would have the funds to ensure that their children got the opportunities they didn’t.
My dad didn’t stop working weekends until after my sister got married – even then he still worked Sundays. Theirs is a similar story to the many thousands of migrants who have built this country.
Unfortunately, like many low paid workers and manual labourers, my mother ultimately found herself unemployed after a workplace injury. She received no compensation and no employer was willing to accommodate her needs. As a woman who struggled with English, she was denied fair opportunity.
This was one of my earliest memories of feeling a strong sense of injustice.
The hurdles my mother was made to jump were almost insurmountable for her. She always found English difficult, and though I was very young, I acted as her interpreter for many of her medical and legal appointments. I remember thinking that because of the language barrier, many of the professionals dealing with my mum thought she was stupid or could be intimidated, which wasn’t the case at all.
The fact that my mother’s experience isn’t unique only makes it worse.
These are still the challenges that face many people in our multicultural community every day. Chisholm is one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse electorates in the country – almost half the people who live in the electorate immigrated to Australia from another country. It saddens me to say that every day, somewhere in our own neighbourhoods, there is a person who is struggling to communicate, who is being ignored or who is being treated in a condescending manner.
Every day in our community, there is a person who is missing out on an opportunity because a prejudice against their race, religion, gender, disability, age or sexuality stands in their way. Every day there are families in our community working to build a life for themselves and fighting for the right to get a fair go.
These are the people that Labor stands up for. These are the people who have given so much to our community and country and still face subtle prejudices every day. The Chinese family buying the house next door are not foreign investors taking away opportunities from somebody else - they are local residents who want to live in a nice home near great local schools with access to affordable healthcare, just like everybody else.
To overcome the subtle prejudices which still plague our great multicultural society, we need a government which will protect our strong anti-discrimination laws and will not encourage the ignorant, fear-filled screams of a vocal minority for cheap political advantage. I know the hurt unthinking, casual prejudice causes and I know that the only government that will always fight against racism and prejudice and seek to advance multiculturalism is a Shorten Labor Government.
Stefanie Perri is the Labor candidate for Chisholm in Victoria.
