Maiden Speech

Ms LE (Fowler) (11:57): Mr Speaker, thank you for welcoming me into this place. I feel blessed that I am able to stand here today in the 47th Parliament of Australia.

Before I begin I would like to acknowledge the Ngunnawal people, the traditional custodians of the Canberra region. I pay my respects to the elders past and emerging and to all of Australia’s Indigenous peoples. I also wish to pay my respects to the Cabrogal people of the Dharug nation as the first inhabitants of the electorate of Fowler.

My name is Dai Trang Le. I’m an Australian of Vietnamese heritage and a refugee who escaped war-torn Vietnam with her family in April 1975 as a child.

Toi ten la Dai Trang Le, toi la mot nguoi Uc goc Viet, va mot nguoi ti nan, da vuot bien voi me toi va hai dua em sau gia phong vao thang 4 nam 1975 khi toi con nho.

I’m humbled that my community has chosen me to represent them. It will be hard to express in words how grateful I am for this unbelievable opportunity and tremendous responsibility, but I will try. I never set out to be a politician. I only want to be a strong advocate for a community that has been neglected and abandoned by the major parties. I started that journey nearly 14 years ago today and I’m ready to make sure that the people of Fowler have their voices heard.

My electorate of Fowler is named for Elizabeth Lilian Maud Fowler MBE, 1886 to 1954, for her contribution to local government and in recognition of her role as the first woman mayor in Australia in 1938. She was a trailblazer in local public service, a woman ahead of her time. As someone who comes from and deeply believes in local government, I couldn’t be more proud to represent Fowler.

Many of my colleagues in this chamber will attest that one of Australia’s greatest prime ministers, the Hon. Gough Whitlam, proudly represented the people of Fowler, as I do today. I’m sure he would have agreed that, while it is a privilege to represent the people of Fowler, we are not a privileged people. We are the forgotten people, and yet we are the backbone of Australia.

Fowler is an amazingly rich area in culture, talent, people and landscape. We are one of the most culturally diverse electorates in the country. Our residents and families come from more than 130 different cultures around the world and have called Australia home. More than half the population, 52 per cent, were born overseas, and almost 70 per cent speak another language other than English. Nearly 10,000 refugees were resettled in our region, particularly in the Fairfield City Council area, between 2012 and 2017—more than any other city in Australia. Many come seeking opportunities, possibilities and freedom.

We are a settlement city, and proudly so since the Second World War. But a settlement city has its own challenges. We have the third-highest unemployment rate in the country, at almost 10 per cent, which is about three times the national average of 3.5 per cent. Our median income is 20 per cent less than the rest of the nation. Almost 77 per cent of our population live in a family household and at least 20 per cent in a lone household. Forty-two per cent of our residents rent, compared to the New South Wales average of 32.6 per cent.

Our low socioeconomic profile eclipses our resilience, grit and determination. Our people and our families play a critical role in elevating Australia’s economy. We are the backbone of the New South Wales economy, if not the country’s economy. This was evident during the COVID pandemic, when almost everything came to a halt because our tradies, truck drivers, retail workers, nurses, teachers and office workers were locked down. We weren’t allowed to travel beyond the five-kilometre radius from our homes. We were told to get travel permits. We were forced to get tested every three days. We had helicopters flying around our area as well as police on horseback and men in uniforms knocking on people’s doors. While the intention was good, we are a city made up of people who have fled tyrannical regimes and war zones, like my own home country. The last time I looked, a government that takes away an individual’s liberty to choose how they want to live, work and raise a family was called a communist dictatorship, a political system that my family and I and many other refugees escaped from, especially the Vietnamese Australian community.

But, despite what has been thrown at us from mainstream media over the years, despite the lack of investment in our great city and despite the lack of resources to make life better for our hardworking citizens, our people soldier on, placing their hopes and dream on their children to study well, to do well, to live well and to give back to the community. Not only are we the most resilient, embracing and courageous community, since COVID, we are the most vaccinated and the most tested.

I am so proud to have grown up in this amazing place amongst these amazing people. I have witnessed its growing pains over the years and I am now witnessing its maturity as a cohesive, embracing and accepting multicultural community. Our Fowler electorate stretches from the wonderful Western Sydney Parklands, covering the suburbs of Abbotsbury, Edensor Park, Greenfield Park, St Johns Park, Prairiewood and Bossley Park—where the great Marconi club was born—to the west of the electorate, with families in the suburbs of Bonnyrigg, Mount Pritchard, Cabramatta, Canley Vale, Canley Heights, Fairfield East, Villawood, Carramar and Lansvale enjoying the diversity of cultural cuisines and religious places of worship as well as the Georges River, which connects it to the Chipping Norton Lake.

Like many in the electorate of Fowler, mine is a refugee settlement story. I was seven years old when Saigon fell during the Vietnam War in April 1975.

My mother was forced to flee with my two younger sisters, escaping communism. It was a time of chaos and confusion. I remember running with my mother and two younger sisters, scrambling to make our way onto a boat and pushing through the cries and screams of women and children. I had no idea what was happening. All I can recall are the cries, the panic, the chaos and the one moment on the boat when I turned around to look back at my birth country to try and comprehend what was happening and just saw a big black smoke in the distance.

I remember the moment when I thought we would die, when a huge storm hit our boat. I remember my sister Vi and I hanging on for dear life while my mother held my other sister tightly in her arms, praying with her rosary beads. I remember being soaking wet, lying under the tarp as the ocean hit us and the rain poured down. I remember how my face almost hit the ocean as our boat rocked so hard from the storm. And I remember my mother warning that I had to hold onto my sister and a plastic canister, just in case the boat tipped over, until we could find one another.

Trying to peer through the tarp, all I could hear was the storm, and I was terrified we wouldn’t survive because none of us could swim. My mother kept praying, rosary beads in hand, as the boat continued to rock. The ocean was pitch-dark, and all I could think of was that I was going to fall into this black abyss. I kept praying in my heart that, should the boat tip over, I would still be able to hold onto my sister and find my mother. The storm subsided the next morning, but everyone was exhausted. I remember seeing bodies lying on the boat like dead corpses.

I remember the years in refugee camps, dreaming of being able to lie on a proper bed, to have a proper home and to go to a proper school. I remember the moment when we were accepted to be resettled as refugees in Australia, known to many back in refugee camps as the island with the best education system in the world, and I remember, as we stepped out of Kingsford Smith Airport, the feeling of gratitude and freedom. We were filled with hope as we looked out onto a horizon of endless possibilities.

Australia, you welcomed my mother and my family with open arms. You gave us comfort, food and a warm bed to sleep in. I will never forget the love shown to us by Aunty Claudia and Don Smith, who helped my family integrate into the community, and their children, Kylie, Maleea and Matthew, who kindly shared their books, clothes and toys with us. I know that Aunty Claudia is in the public gallery today with her daughter Kylie Williamson and Kylie’s husband, Neale Williamson. I want to thank them for their kind and generous hearts, for being there for my mother and sisters as we struggled to rebuild our lives. There weren’t any refugee or settlement services around to hold our hands back in those days. It was the kindness and support of people like Claudia and Don Smith and the St Vincent de Paul ladies society that helped us embrace the Australian culture and way of life.

I remember the Feras, who gave my mother her first job cleaning their house and helped us to get settled in. Mr Jim Fera has since passed, but his and his family’s was a migrant story—from Italy, he came to Australia, worked hard to build his shoe business and later helped people like my mother. And I remember the Wards, of Scottish ancestry, who introduced me to anzac biscuits and made me feel like I belonged to this new country. This migration story belongs to all of us. It’s our story, and we can all be proud to share it. I also want to take this opportunity to pay tribute and acknowledge all of the Australian service men and women who fought for our freedom in Vietnam and who continue to serve us today.

So after all that, how did I get to this place? I entered politics at the community level, fighting for a car park in Cabramatta in 2008, almost exactly 14 years ago to this day. I had just returned from a reporting trip with ABC’s Foreign Correspondent when I heard people at Cabramatta markets complaining about the decision by the then state member for Cabramatta to resign soon after she lost her health ministry. The chatter in the markets was that people had voted for her at every election and now she couldn’t even deliver a car park for them. After hearing my outrage, my husband suggested I consider being a voice for the community. With no links to political parties or mainstream politics at all, the idea seemed daunting. How could I, a simple ABC reporter back then, do such a thing? I had no idea what was needed to be the voice of the community of Cabramatta. I’ll be honest—it was scary.

In 2008, people of diverse backgrounds, and in particular women of colour and those like me, did not feature in mainstream public life. I had no-one to turn to. I had no-one to mentor me nor to guide me on the journey I was about to take. But I took the leap of faith. I was so driven by the feeling of unfairness in how my community were treated as second-class citizens—the fact that my community weren’t given a car park when they had been crying out for one for years, and that people had to pay 50c to use the toilet. I advocated strongly for the car park in 2008, which was delivered a few years after, following my election to the local council in 2012. I started my journey with one small step. As Lao Tzu said, a journey of a thousand miles begins with one small step.

For me, the decision to go into mainstream politics was easy not because I knew anything about it; rather, it was because I knew nothing about it. At the December 2021 election, just last year, myself and the first Independent mayor, Frank Carbone, joined forces to run an Independent ticket for the election. While our team had managed a small win in 2016, it was a very slim win—250 votes. But last year we won the majority, with 10 of our 13 councillors elected. It was a very significant result, with the first popularly elected mayor with a 75 per cent margin.

It was against this background that we said something had to be done about the move to parachute in a woman, a former Premier, to be our voice in Fowler. We believed that it was time for one of us with lived experience, who’d grown up, worked, lived and spent most of our life in our community fighting and standing up for it—especially over the past couple of years during COVID and lockdown—to represent us. Conversations started among our small team: could we sit back and let our community be taken for granted again? The people of Fowler wanted and needed a representative who came from their community and who would never forget the personal challenges that they faced every day—who had walked in our shoes and been through what we had been through, not just at election time but every day.

As a breast cancer survivor, I have experienced our amazing health system. I can say that in life-and-death situations our public health system is probably the best in the world. It saved me and my mother, who’s had three open-heart surgeries. But often it can fail the many other ordinary Australians for simple treatments and services. We have two hospitals in Fowler: one that is heavily resourced, in Liverpool Hospital, and another that is hardly resourced at all, in Fairfield Hospital. In 2019 I campaigned for Fairfield to get funding in order to have wi-fi, because the hospital didn’t have the electricity capacity to enable wi-fi. At the start of this year, while attending one of our amazing cultural events, the lunar new year, I was approached by two young women, who stopped to thank me for campaigning for the improvement to the hospital. They were both specialists and told me that because of my campaigning they were able to treat patients under the basement of the hospital, because it now had air-conditioning.

As long as I’m in this House I will continually ask that both federal and state governments reassess health funding allocations so that they are equally distributed to our hospitals.

Liverpool Hospital, despite the funding, is also overstretched because people and cases are pushed there. As a result, staff are underresourced and stressed and people are not seen on time and get frustrated because of the lack of care and service. This government can do more for families and communities like mine in Fowler. We need funding restored to Fairfield Hospital so that it can cater to the ageing and culturally diverse population and so that it doesn’t put pressure on the Liverpool health system.

We have a large percentage of young people in Fowler. Many children of migrants and refugees are moving back into the area to be closer to their ageing parents and more affordable housing, for those who can afford it, and to set up businesses that will allow them the flexibility to spend more time with their families. Fowler has form in small business. There are 13,190 in our division, according to the recent ABS statistics. Small business makes up 98 per cent of all businesses in Fowler.

While the government recently announced the increase in migration places to 195,000 to assist with the skills shortage in Australia, I ask the government to first look locally to address the skills shortage because in my electorate of Fowler there’s almost 10 per cent unemployment. I would also like to ask the government to look at the reason why we have skill shortages. I know of qualified people who were forced out of a job because of the vaccine mandate. We need to rethink this and include them back into the workforce. We must learn to live with COVID. We also have migrants and refugees with professional qualifications who are now working in underqualified occupations. We must work to safely create pathways for recognition of their qualifications so that we can engage their skills in our community. If we are to bring in more migrants, the government has the duty to ensure that there are immediate plans to build more housing, more public transport infrastructure and more local services to accommodate this planned increase.

Our community has seen the settlement of almost 10,000 refugees, with no additional funds to hospitals, schools, waste services, roads maintenance, traineeships or job opportunities. While it might sound and feel good to bring in more people, we must ensure that they are set up to succeed and to be included in communities and provided with housing, education and other opportunities. We cannot simply increase migration and then let these new migrants fend for themselves in a foreign country, leaving them feeling marginalised and demonised. It is the responsibility of government to ensure systems and plans are in place to enable a productive, cohesive and connected society.

I want to see the Fowler community prosper. We have people who are willing and ready to work. So we’re looking to the future of technology and IT hubs in Fowler as part of the three-cities plan. We want to be the bridge between business and diverse communities to build wealth for our communities and our country.

Our electorate has produced some of the best, diverse talent in Australia. In sports, we have Mark Bosnich, Steve Smith and Michael Clarke. In food, we have Luke and Pauline Nguyen, whose parents opened one of the first pho shops, a Vietnamese soup, in Cabramatta for the Vietnamese community. We have Angie Hong, the founder of Cabramatta’s landmark restaurant Thanh Binh, and her son, Dan, an Australian chef, restaurateur and television host of The Streets with Dan Hong on SBS Food. In the creative space, we have the talented Maria Tran, the Asian-Australian woman who started a female action film movement that challenges gender stereotypes.

We must invest in our children. It’s our job to plant the seeds of success today for a future Australia that we can all celebrate. I will work towards getting many of our local schools into permanent buildings. Nobody should have to go to school in demountables for years. Our education system should be ready technology-wise so that young children can tap into the future of work. Is our educational system fit for the future of work? My son is currently studying in second year at university, and he told me many students are given videos to watch as part of their lectures. There are hardly any student-lecturer interactions. Since COVID, many young people are finding that they’re no longer connected to what’s presented to them on a laptop. Young people must be supported as they struggle to study, to find work and to figure out their place in this fast-paced, social media driven world that we’re now living in. Increasing traineeships, apprenticeships and internships will encourage and provide the platform and resources for our youth to be innovative so that they can add value to solving some of the world’s problems. We need funding to build facilities that will care for our elderly, especially those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, who are often forgotten. We need to plan for equitable, accessible and affordable health services for those with special needs and for the vulnerable.

So I’m here to represent the families of Fowler, those who wake up early every morning, the working people—the people trying to juggle a mortgage and pay rent, work in a factory or run a family business, all while getting their young educated. I am their voice. We have often been misrepresented and misunderstood. But get to know us and you’ll see we are more than a headline. We are so much more. I’m here to fight for resources, for facilities and for funds for my community. Fowler, you fought for me and stood up for me, and I will stand up for you so that our children will not be forgotten and overlooked. As long as I have the honour to represent the Fowler community in this House, you will hear me calling out for the funding we need for our children, for our education and health, and for local services that we deserve.

To my people—my community of Fowler—I wouldn’t be standing here in this 47th Parliament without you. I’m here to serve you with integrity and transparency. I’m accountable to you. Know that I will fight for our rights to celebrate and promote the amazing cultural diversity that this country has afforded us. And I will also stand up to defend our freedom to express our different perspectives and thinking, and to share our ideas with respect for each other. No one human being can be, think and experience life like another, not even in a close-knit family. And know that, of the 151 members of parliament, we have achieved the most unique result. I can say with my hand on my heart that you, the people, delivered me. It was not any major parties, nor any funders. It’s you, the community, and my family’s mortgage!

I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart, as well as the many people who have been on this mad journey with me for the past decade. I’m standing alone in this chamber today, but on my journey to this place I have been accompanied by many. I must thank all the people who have been with me on my journey for the past decade: Katrina Le, Sue Lee Lim, Ken Chapman, Julie Tagg, Geoff Davis, Charlie Lynn, Andrew Rohan, Charbel Saliba, Raymond Pham, Thomas Dang, Leonard Sii, Bailey Wang, Anna Duong, Son Brown, Wendy Chuyen and Gwen Riley. And to my current team at the council, Kevin Lam, Ugo Morvillo, Reni Barkho and Milovan Karajic: while we only met in recent years, you have given 150 per cent at each election since we met. And the same to these community members: Ninos Younan, Tiglat Rommel, Monica Falco, Julianna Falco, Bao Nguyen, Thy Ha, Samantha Bun, Julie Dang, Michael Mijatovic, Linh Podetti, Jennifer Cao, Jacqui Ashley, Anderson Chen, Pat Sergi, Lytha and Holly Khorn, Laith Alchino, Samir Yousif, Immanuel Sada, Adem Cetinay and Sinilia Radivojevic. And to the numerous volunteers who travelled from all across Australia to support our campaign, I offer a huge and heartfelt thankyou.

Politics is a lonely journey, as many of you in this chamber would attest. Someone can be your closest ally one minute and your enemy the next. It changes like the flick of a switch. Finding someone to trust and work through the political labyrinth with is not easy. There are trials and errors. I’m lucky to have found a great and trusted team in my councillor colleagues, but there’s one person who has been on that political journey with me, fighting the enemies as well as delivering for the community since we got on council: my council colleague, the Mayor of Fairfield City, Frank Carbone. Mr Carbone’s endorsement of me to the community at the May 2022 election played a key role in my success in Fowler. He has the support of many in our city and region. Thank you, Frank!

To my family—my sisters Vi Le, Thuy Vi Le and Jaycie Le, and to my mother, who all never, ever doubted me and have always been there for me—I’m sorry I’ve been an absent sister and daughter. To my sister Vi and her husband, Alan Morris, in particular: you’ve always been there, willing to help, whenever I reach out, without complaint or criticism. Thank you for your unconditional support, understanding and kindness, and for standing by me throughout my political journey since I began in 2008.

Lastly, and certainly not least, to my beautiful and loving family—the most important of all, my darling son, Ethan Lambert. Ethan started to campaign when he was about five years old, and at every election he was there to help hand out his mother’s house-to-vote cards. I love you to the moon and back! Thank you for allowing me to work for the community without demands and judgement. The same goes for my loving and supportive husband, Markus Lambert. ‘Thank you’ is not enough for all that you have done to enable me to pursue my public life and to be of service to the people of Fowler. I am grateful that you have been willing to put up our personal finances and took huge risks to enable me to reach this milestone. I know you have made huge personal sacrifices for the greater good of the community. The almost-weekly and weeknight functions that I have to attend mean that you had to make your own dinner and look after the house and the family, which includes our two dogs, Bella and Clancy. I’m grateful for your unwavering and unconditional support. Thank you for believing in me, thank you for letting me be me; for igniting my passion and never, ever trying to dim my light. I love you both so much!

I began my journey in this place in the same way I began my life in public service: with hope, with passion and with relentless commitment to do what is right for the people who live in the electorate of Fowler. The people of Fowler are my people. Our story belongs to every Australian. Mr Speaker, thank you for your time.

An incident having occurred in the gallery—

The SPEAKER: I invite members of the gallery to resume their seats. The question is that the address be agreed to. Before I call the honourable member for Cunningham, I remind the House that this the honourable member’s first speech and I ask the House to extend to her the usual courtesies.