Second question from floor: How can any Australian government presume to instruct other governments on human rights or the cause of terrorism when they have failed patently to address structural disadvantage of our indigenous peoples, the gross racism they are subjected to, the racism Muslims and Arab people are subjected to, and continue to lock up asylum seekers in indefinite detention? (Anne Picot)

Kerry Nettle: I don't think I have anything to add - it's a great question. It should be answered. By the government.

Kevin Rudd: I go back to the discussion we had before about compassion. It's about compassion, whether it's in relation to people who are asylum seekers, or if it's about people within this country who are not from the anglo-celtic, anglo-saxon majority, who come to these shores and experience discrimination in the workplace or in the streets of this country or in the communities in which they live. The sign of our maturity as a nation lies in our capacity personally and as a community, institutionally, politically, to deal compassionately with people such as this. The most riveting experience I had recently was in Kabul, I was in Kabul in Afghanistan about five weeks ago, and I ran into individuals who had been forcible returned to Afghanistan, and I listened carefully to their stories, which - those accounts do not make me proud to be a member of this community. What the individual circumstances of their case, what the relevant papers were, I'm not sure, but what I was concerned about was a lack of compassion in our response to these people and their circumstances.

Aden Ridgeway: Well I'm not sure what else can be said about it. I don't believe it's a question at all, I mean, we ought to delete the questionmark, it's a statement. It's a statement that I agree with entirely, and I think that there's an absence of both compassion and understanding, and a need to promote cultural diversity in this country. We seem to be under attack from this government, who seek to impose a narrow set of views and prejudices about what Australians should think and what they should believe in. We're being asked to conform to the straitjacket of the monocultural society. We only have to look around on the streets to see that it is not monocutural. It is culturally diverse. People from all walks of life make a contribution to this nation. We ought to recognise that enrichment. We o ught to recognise that everyone needs to be engaged, not kept outside of the tent, and not being forced to be just like everyone else. I certainly don't want to end up just being one thing and not another. And I celebrate the fact that I come from an indigenous background as well as being a proud Australian. And I would hope that people can share in what's on offer just like in other ethnic groups in this society, we can take something from the [??]. I think we've got to sit down and talk to each other, because it does concern me, people in this country still say they've yet to meet an aboriginal person, I want to know how many people have still yet to say they've met an arab person in this society. That's what we've got to start doing more of, instead of pretending that these ghettos and enclaves have been created, if we think about in the mind, we reinforce that, and we want to be putting the bridges in place to reach out as well. Thank you.

Marise Payne: I think that the issues that are raised in this question are very important issues from a political perspective but also from a community perspective. Some of you will know my engagement, particularly on the asylum seekers question, on the detention question specifically, which is one of those issues that I [??] before in terms of how the political process works, and it's something that I've pursued for some years. You might not think that's good enough, but it's kind of like Kevin's reference to the sound of one hand clapping, and yes there's people within the major parties and within government who are prepared to take up these issues. Similarly, mandatory detention of juvenile defendants in the Northern Territory and in Western Australia, was an issue that I pursued to my great detriment with my colleagues, with anumber of my colleagues in 1998, because of my concerns about the inherently racist basis of those laws. And you do have to have political representatives who are compassionate human beings with a social conscience. I believe more, rather than less, of our political representatives fall into that category. The area in which I work is largely Western Sydney, I work in the crucible, if you like, of the future of Australia, and Aden's quite right, you just have to walk down the street in any of the communities and electorates in which I work particularly, whether you're in Cabramatta or Auburn or Mount Druitt, to see that we have a burgeoning indigenous population in Sydney, which is huge and unacknowledged, that we have the most ethnically diverse parts of this country, to know exactly what I'm talking about. You can walk down any street in Canberra, and you will see the most monocultural world you can possibly imagine - it beggars my imagination, I feel like I'm not in Australia in some parts of Canberra - it's an extraordinary place in some ways. I think that some of the decision-makers need to occasionally leave the leafy streets of Kingston, Red Hill, [??] and Belconnen, and that includes our media representatives, who don't often take a close look at what Australia is about. They regard visiting to a marginal seat as going to Queanbayan or [??], so that doesn't say a great deal about where the rest of that exploration of what Australia is about might take them.

Closing remarks

© NSPD 2004. Last modified 09/05/04.