Newtown Park has a fascinating history. You can walk through it today, and it has a beautiful rose garden, the Queensland State Rose Garden. But, on those grounds, the 11th Light Horse Regiment trained. They famously followed the 4th and 12th Light Horse Regiments in the ride on Beersheba. It’s a proud part of our legacy, and the training grounds are still visible there in Newtown Park. Throughout World War II it was again a camp for US and Australian servicemen as they prepared for the awful days ahead.
Today it serves a very different part of our history. Today, you can walk through Newtown Park and see groups of Yazidi Australians—young kids playing soccer and volleyball, groups of elderly women sitting together in a circle talking and the Yazidi men always walking and talking all the way around the park. I’m there playing basketball with my kids. The challenges of languages and of cultures clashing together played out in this historic park in the centre of regional Australia—it’s something I’m intensely proud of, that Toowoomba has become a place of refuge for these people. It’s a legacy that I think the Liberal Party can reflect on with some pride, thinking back to those terribly dark days when the Yazidi people were being horrifically treated in their homeland by ISIS.
When speaking of the 10th anniversary of that terrible historical event, I don’t want to go into the depths of what they faced. It’s sufficient for us all to note that their homeland became their hell. I’m very proud that Australia was in a situation to be able to reach out to people in desperate need and extend the hand of friendship and love and give them a new home here in Australia. In Toowoomba, we became a place of refuge. What has been extraordinary is that, since those first days, we have had secondary settlement come to Toowoomba in waves. We now have somewhere around 7,000 years Yazidi people living in Toowoomba, the largest regional capital. It’s great to see that they have chosen this as their home and they have found safety, security and friendship in our great city. I think this is an important legacy for us to reflect on on this side of the parliament. It was under Tony Abbott that that decision was made. It was on our leader Peter Dutton, as our then immigration minister, to ensure that those people came here.
I think what’s important for us in acknowledging the extreme trauma that the Yazidi people went through is that, having taken these new friends into our hearts and made them part of our nation, we continue to help their settlement. We are talking about a cohort of new Australians who experienced trauma far beyond what the human mind can imagine. In remembering those days, I think it’s important that we set ourselves forward for what the next 10 years will look like, to make sure that we reach out to the Yazidi Australians and say, ‘Hey, look, we understand this is going to be tough—this has been tough—and we’ll continue to find ways to work with you.’
I have been very happy that, in my community, my predecessor, John McVeigh, sought specific funding to help with that resettlement process, understanding that many of these people did not have a written language and did not have an understanding of how to integrate into our society. The mechanisms that we might use for other cultures were not working, and we had to find new ways to make that work. Having brought them here, it’s our responsibility to make sure that they do settle and they are given every opportunity. I’ve continued that fight to continue that funding. I think it’s important to point out that, when we extended that hand of friendship, it was with very strong borders. It was with a view that the full processes would be applied. I speak to particularly the younger Yazidis who remember going through that process and how tough it was, sometimes going to a third country and waiting over a year for their visas to come through and how tough that process was but how grateful they are to be with us. I think it’s important on this anniversary to say: after all you’ve been through, we are grateful you’ve joined us. You’ve made us a better country. Your hard work and effort is something that we reflect on with great pride. I look forward in 10 years time to saying how well you’ve settled.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mrs Archer): Is there a seconder for the motion?
Ms Price: I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.
