Thank you, Carmel. Can I start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land and pay my respects to custodians of the lands on which we meet the Ngunnawal people, and extend that respect to any First Nations people joining us here today. I'm also going to take a moment to acknowledge and thank my dear friend Carmel, the CEO for the Centre of Multicultural Youth and Chair of MYAN. My other dear friend Rana, National Manager of MYAN and who put this week's program together. So, give it up for Rana. And I also acknowledge Soo-Jin Rhee, our United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Representative in Australia and the Pacific, Ms. Mary Ann Geronimo from FECCA.

I also want to just acknowledge other representatives from state-based youth peak bodies who have travelled to be here today. But of course, I really also want to especially thank the 16 young and emerging leaders here today for their leadership. Your leadership in the community, you work in really making a difference to the lives of young people.

It's my pleasure to be here today. And I stand here today as the very first standalone Minister for Multicultural Affairs in Cabinet. It's just actually really humbling to be appointed to this role. And together with the new Office for Multicultural Affairs, we have the means to drive a cohesive approach to multicultural policy that will work across all levels of government. And in leading this new Office, I want to ensure that multiculturalism moves on. That it's not just about celebrating food as long as it tastes like chicken, and festivals as long as they're colourful, but that it's also about the character of our nation. It is about who we are. And what do I mean by that? I mean that I want to build an understanding of multiculturalism and a nation where every child and every young person, no matter where you were born or no matter where your parents are from, that you all have a chance to thrive. A nation where all Australians are treated with respect and that can participate equally in the social, political and economic life of our country and where we, all of us, recognise that we share this land with the world's oldest continuous living culture.

There are intersectional barriers to inclusion and participation that I want to break down. And when I thought about this speech, I thought the best way to do this was to give you a glimpse into me and who I am. So, I want to read for you two excerpts from my book. The first excerpt is about my early life, and the second excerpt is about Anne, the teenager. So, I'm going to read these for you. And I hope that they will give you an indication of where I come to this portfolio from, but also an indication of my own identity as well and how that's been formed. Okay, so this is from my book.

By the time I was five, my parents had settled into their new roles in Australia. Dad as a factory worker and Mum as a nurse's aide. It must have seemed like it was all for nothing. The arguments with my grandfather, the tsunami of tears at leaving her family and friends behind, the indignant looks from the old women in El Minya, my mother's village. The battles, both big and small, Mum had to fight as an independent, educated woman in Egypt. And after all of that, here she was, living in a granny flat, married to a factory worker and working as a nurse's aide. There was always somebody to remind her how grateful she should be. Always a nurse or a patient ready with a comment about how lucky she was to even be allowed into this country, this country that had chosen her so far from home. There were the bus drivers who would tell her to get to the back of the line, even as she struggled to manage her two toddlers and then make her repeat the word ‘please’ several times before begrudgingly allowing her to board. There was an aura of racism in this place they called the lucky country. It lingered in my parents’ clothes and in the greyness of their faces at the end of the long day's work. Like the malodorous stench of a heavy smoker's breath. And yet, like the hundreds of thousands who had come across the seas before them and the millions who would come after them, my parents understood that this was part of the Australian migrant experience. They held strong to the vision that their sacrifices today would mean that their daughters would have a better life tomorrow. If Australia was not lucky for them, surely it would be for their offspring.

Now I want to turn to the year I turned 13 and we had just moved into a new suburb in Sydney's west.

As the families came, the local kids were the first to get to know each other as kids do. Our parents followed suit, and it wasn't long before we were part of a local community. Next door lived a youngish pregnant couple who had migrated from England. On the other side, a family from New Zealand with two daughters. Two doors down, the Chinese couple who owned a restaurant and their two sons. Across the road, in a sprawling double-storey home, lived the policeman and part-time pastor, his wife, five children and two dogs. Next to them were the Yugoslavian family who covered all their furniture in clear plastic. And down the road were the Greeks. During the long, hot summers, when the days faded unnoticed into night, all the children would congregate on the last empty block on the street right across from our house to play cricket or softball. We improvised wickets out of tin garbage bins borrowed from our neighbours, temporarily halting play and moving the garbage wickets to let approaching cars pass. We played for hours, interrupted intermittently by a parent standing on the front porch, letting their child know that it was dinner time and time to go indoors. We played until the last couple of children got their call for dinner and departed, grudgingly kicking up the ground and blaming their parents for ruining their promising career as a legend of Aussie driveway cricket. With each child's name called out in the dusky sky, a different accent could be made out. Greek, Italian, English, Irish, Swedish, Chinese, Arabic, Australian. Nobody cared. Nobody made fun of each other's strange names or the funny way that our mothers called for us. Nobody cared that my skin gradually became almost black over the course of the summer. Nobody asked me if I believed in Jesus. As more houses were built, more children were welcomed into our fold, and as long as you knew how to play cricket, could yell out, ‘howzat’ with your feet hip width apart, knees slightly bent, and arms raised to the sky and run back and forth, you were welcomed. When the family across the road built a swimming pool. Marco Polo was favoured over cricket on the cooking hot tarmac. And when the last house on the block was finally built, we looked for adventure in the bushes surrounding our street and along the banks of the Georges River. They were our communal backyard. If all we know about a place can be reduced to the sum of our memories of that place, then my memories of the streets of Chipping Norton in the twilight years of the decade of hippies, disco, ABBA, female eunuchs, Margaret Thatcher and international terrorism defined for me what it means to be Australian. And though I still got teased at school for my glasses, second-hand jeans that were too short in the leg, and for being too smart, I knew that my home was a place that embraced me with all my awkwardness and for all my difference. I've carried those memories with me all my life. They've given me comfort and solace at times when my home didn't seem so welcoming. Whenever I'm asked if I think Australia is a racist country, I have to stop and think. It would be easy for me to ignore my own biases and view my country through the narrow prism of just one or two aspects of my identity. Yes, I am Muslim, yes, I am a child of the Naxa, but I'm also a mother, sister, wife, friend, academic, writer, politician, educator, community worker, coffee drinker, gardener, and average cook. But maybe average is a bit of a stretch on the cooking thing. And it's all these things that I am and how I became them that fit together in a perfectly formed kaleidoscope. So, when I say that the Australia where the so-called silent majority rue the demise of a white Australia that never really was and wishes away Muslim immigration, it's not the Australia that I know. It's because I've known a different Australia and that Australia is the Australia that I choose to remember.

I hope that gives you a sense of what I want for all of you. I want you to have a sense of place. I want you to have a sense of belonging. I want you to not question your identity. Please don't. I want you to not question your Australianness like I had to. Sorry, I'm gonna cry. I didn't mean that. But yeah. And I want you to not have your Australianness questioned by others also. And MYAN plays a critical role in all of that by representing our younger and ethnically diverse generations. MYAN, you do such important work, really important work, which brings us to today and which brings us to FUSE. Our experiences as migrants and refugees are only one descriptor of who we are, but it doesn't illustrate the multitude of differences and personal experiences that make us all who we are, that make us all individuals. I know all of you are already making a difference to the lives of young people in Australia, and you're motivated to be agents of the change that you want to see and the change that I have hoped to see for so long.

And on that note, I wish you the best of luck. I wish you the best of luck tomorrow, where I know you will have the opportunity to present to Members of Parliament and Senators at Parliament House. And I must also make a point here that this is the most diverse government in the history of Australia. So, please take that [indistinct]. This is an amazing way for you to put into practice everything that you've learned and developed through the FUSE program, and I hope it gives you a valuable insight into how our democracy works, but more importantly, what your role is in that as well. I'd encourage you to think about how you can use this week as an important step in your journey, in your own journeys, in your own becoming and in your own belonging and in your own contributions to a future nation where each and every one of us can feel that sense of belonging, too. So, thank you. Thank you for all the work that you do in your communities. Thank you for being here. It's such a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for your dedication and your commitment to helping young migrants and young refugees in this country. And I wish you all the very best.