Mr NATHAN HAGARTY ( Leppington ) ( 20:01 ): Pauline Hanson recently argued that Australia should be monocultural. That comment has generated considerable discussion. It appears to be based on the premise that Australia would be better off with less cultural diversity, not more. Many of the things we proudly call Australian today were shaped by people who brought traditions, customs and ideas from all over the world. Take football. Right now, the Socceroos are capturing the nation's attention at the World Cup. That success was built by migrant communities and a multicultural team that reflects modern Australia. Take Sydney's fruit and vegetable markets. Take the flat white. None of those things are foreign to Australia; they are Australia.

As Tim Soutphommasane observed, the success of Australia's multicultural project has come not from setting aside a common identity, but from combining diversity with shared Australian values. Those values are not negotiable. They include democracy, equality before the law, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the rule of law, mutual respect, respect for women and a fair go. I have never not known multicultural Australia. One of my earliest memories is of Ulla Bartels, a German migrant who lived in the flat above ours and taught English to South‑East Asian refugees. She also taught my mum tapestry. When I played footy as a kid, my dad coached the team. Each year, he would plan the season around Ramadan because we had a few very good players of Lebanese background. They would fast during Ramadan, and we needed to manage the interchange bench and training accordingly.

Every year my mother worked at Oktoberfest at Fairfield Markets for Hans. The extra money helped our family through difficult times, although my mum would say that the free sauerkraut was just as important. My father‑in‑law arrived in Australia in 1979 as a Vietnamese refugee after fleeing by boat. Today, his son‑in‑law stands in this Parliament. His daughters-in‑law were born in Korea and China, and another is the daughter of migrants from Laos. Those are the people who raised me, taught me, coached me and helped shape who I am. When I hear calls for a monocultural Australia, I do not hear an attack on an abstract Government policy; I hear an attack on my family, my community and the Australia I grew up in.

Long before British colonisation, this continent was home to hundreds of First Nation peoples, languages and cultures. The British arrived with Irish, Scottish and Jewish convicts, alongside people from the Americas, the Caribbean and Africa. One was John Randall, an African American born into slavery in Connecticut and my direct ancestor. Australia has never been monocultural—not before colonisation, not after colonisation and not now. Multicultural Australia is not a recent experiment; it is our history. If monoculture is the answer, Australians deserve to know the question. What exactly is being fixed? What exactly is being removed? Once we move beyond slogans and apply the idea to real communities, those questions become unavoidable. What does monoculture mean? Who decides? Where is the line drawn, and what happens to those on the wrong side of it?

What does it mean for the families gathering at Catholic, Coptic and Orthodox churches, Hindu temples, mosques, Mandaean mandis and Sikh gurdwaras across south-west Sydney? What does it mean for the families celebrating Lunar New Year, Diwali, Eid, Parwanaya, and Orthodox Christmas and Easter? As I have said many times in this place, my electorate is home to more students attending private schools than any other electorate in the State. We have Catholic schools, Serbian Orthodox schools and Sunni and Shia Islamic schools. Those schools are not on the fringe of Australian society. They educate local children, contribute to my community and help shape the next generation of Australians. Where do they fit in a monocultural Australia?

What about community language schools? What about the children who spend their Saturday mornings learning Serbian, Arabic, Vietnamese, Khmer, Urdu, Bangla or Hindi? Are those schools part of the monoculture? What about the local businesses? Are the Vietnamese bakeries, Chinese restaurants, Italian delis, Lebanese sweet shops and Indian grocers expected to disappear? Those are not rhetorical questions; they are the logical consequences of what is being proposed. The Australian people deserve more than one‑line talking points dressed up as policy.

At a time when some are openly advocating monoculture, Australians deserve to know where politicians stand. That is why Angus Taylor's refusal to clearly support multiculturalism was not just disappointing, but a failure of leadership. His electorate of Hume overlaps with my electorate. We represent many of the same families, communities and businesses. They deserve a clear answer. If politicians want monoculture, they should define it. If they oppose multiculturalism, they should say so. However, if they support multiculturalism, they should have the courage to defend it.