I rise to speak in support of the member for Moreton's motion on this very important issue, the vilification of minority groups. I'm proud to represent the electorate of Werriwa for many reasons. Chief amongst them is its strong, diverse multicultural community. We recognise it, we celebrate it and we're stronger for it.

Australia is the most successful multicultural nation on earth. Our migration and settlement program is an exemplar and is looked to by other nations as world's best practice, and rightly so. But it needs to stay that way. Not a week goes by when I am not witness to the best of multicultural Australia in my electorate, either in my public capacity or my private capacity, whether at a cultural festival or citizenship ceremony or at one of the many shops, and in shopkeepers that are neighbours to my electorate office or in the diverse faces in childcare centres and schools in our community. A mark of multicultural Australia's success is that for the vast majority of us it is so unremarkable. It is important to ensure that it remains so and that people are safe in our community.

Werriwa is a proud community of many different cultures and many different backgrounds, and it is strong for exactly that reason. We understand and welcome all the cultures that have made this country the great place it is today. It is a value driven community, not only of the people who live there but of the organisations that work for the people of Werriwa. Just yesterday, I was present at the bicentennial celebration service for St Luke's Anglican Church in Liverpool. A Francis Greenway designed church, it has been holding services on the same site for 200 years. Reverend Stuart Pearson led the service in front of the New South Wales Governor, the Hon. Margaret Beazley; the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Davies; and the Bishop of Georges River, Reverend Lin. The service was most definitely reflective of our multicultural community, acknowledging the traditional owners as well as reflecting 19 different language groups within the congregation when the Bible verse John 3:16 was recited in different languages, from Auslan to Nepalese and Cantonese, as well as Arabic, Italian, French, Vietnamese and many more. As Councillor Charishma Kaliyanda said, it represented our diversity and unity, as many voices use the same words to provide the same message of love and respect.

Another organisation that lives and breathes those values is Al-Muntada, the Iraqi Australian University Graduates Forum. Al-Muntada works across south-west Sydney, including in my seat of Werriwa, to provide cultural and educational harmony. Since 2008, it has run projects, held activities and events that foster cultural exchange between the local Iraqi community and the wider Australian community. Amongst those most Australians value is the recognition of the transformative nature of education as well as the love of song and dance in the defence of human rights. The group includes members from all of Iraq's major cultures, religions and denominations—Sunni, Shia, Christian, Mandaean, Kurdish, Arabic and Assyrian. They embody both the rich depth of the history and culture of their Iraqi heritage and the harmonious multicultural values of their Australian homeland. Each year, they hold the Shanasheel Iraqi Cultural Festival at the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre. Last year's keynote speech was from orthopaedic surgeon and former asylum seeker Dr Munjed Al Muderis.

Dr Al Muderis's story is like so many great Australian migrant stories, one of someone who has come to this country with nothing but the clothes on his back and has built a prosperous and successful life in the country that has given them a second chance. Dr Al Muderis fled Saddam Hussein's Iraq as a young surgeon after refusing to mutilate the ears of army deserters. After reaching Australia by boat, via Indonesia and Malaysia, he was kept in the Curtin detention centre, including a stint in solitary confinement. Despite this, after being released he continued his career in medicine, becoming a pioneer and a world leader in developing a new method for the implanting of prosthetic limbs.

We should embrace and value the contribution of all our community, wherever they come from. This is what brings us together. Everyone should feel safe and be safe and have the opportunity to live together peacefully. It is better for all us when this happens.

I thank the member for Boothby for moving this motion, as it gives me a chance to talk about the disaster that the NBN has been for many residents of Werriwa. Despite the spin, the NBN is a hotchpotch patchwork of a multitechnology mix that will rely on a very aged copper network well into the future. In fact, the copper wires in my suburb have been there for 58 years. This is not a network built for the future; it is a scattergun approach that has been put together by the Liberal government. When the NBN was planned by the Labor Party, it was a network that enabled fibre-to-the-premises connections for nearly all Australians. For those who have that connection, which was provided in the early rollout in my electorate, they have brilliant, high-speed connections. Unfortunately, too few have fibre to the premises. What they do have is slow, unreliable internet connections reliant on copper connection—if they have an NBN connection at all.

The rollout is ongoing and delayed in Werriwa. Take the suburb of Long Point. Long Point is a suburb in the bushland along the Georges River, and it is heavily reliant on stable connections to the internet so it can be made aware of bushfires and so forth. Long Point is also just one example of many in my electorate and around the country of the failure of the rollout and the multitechnology mix. The people of Long Point have experienced frequent delays that have plagued the installation of the NBN over this small suburb of just three streets. Emails from NBN Co tell of the expected rollout to Long Point in the latter half of 2017. Yet, today in 2019, only a portion of the suburb is actually connected. That's right: it's two years later and most people in that suburb are still waiting for their NBN connection. The latest problem, I'm told, is an infrastructure shortfall that is expected to be fixed by 2020. The NBN has provided the following explanation to me: 'This service area appears to be ready for the service, and most premises will receive NBN by fibre-to-the-node or HFC technology. There are a small number of premises within the fibre-to-the-node footprint that are unable to receive a connection.' The email continues: 'In this instance, the distance of some of these premises from the NBN network means we can't connect properly, in the same way as we have connected others, because of the length of the copper. The signal degrades over distance, and it wouldn't be possible to achieve a service that meets the minimum requirements. At this stage, the expected service availability date is January 2020.' So, three years after Long Point was originally scheduled for connection, some of the residents may get internet speeds of 25 megabits per second—hardly First World speeds for 15 kilometres away from Liverpool, and another example of why copper is not one of the best options.

We have constituents who often have to go outside to find higher ground just to make phone calls. We have parents who are worried that a lack of internet access will mean their kids will fall behind in school, and there are university students who can't access multimedia and upload assignments.

The NBN Co's own figures from February this year show that while the number of premises connected has increased by 38 per cent, speeds were still slow and certainly not up to standard. Australia is now ranked 62nd in the world in internet speeds, falling yet another three spots since 2018. The Ookla speedtest global index has Australia behind Kazakhstan and Cape Verde. It was the Liberal government that moved the majority of the network to fibre to the node, forcing the majority of users to rely on the aged copper network. It was then in 2016, under the same Liberal government, that fibre to the kerb was announced as another way to deliver the NBN, again relying on copper wiring.

The internet is meant to connect people through technology, not unite communities and connect people through sheer frustration at the complete failure of government policy. It's sad that in 20 years' time my constituents will still be relying on the copper network, a network that slows or becomes unusable just because it rains, a network that becomes nearly unusable just because it's between 7.00 pm and 10.00 pm at night and the copper lines can't deal with the connection. Patchwork quilts won't serve a community, patchwork quilts won't deliver high-speed internet and patchwork quilts actually have a purpose and it's not for the delivery of NBN. The government really does need to do better.

The Shepherd Centre provides a range of services to over 500 families across five centres in New South Wales and the ACT, as well as outreach support to Tasmania and rural and remote Australia. Since 1970 the Shepherd Centre has assisted more than 2½ thousand children who are deaf or hearing impaired to improve their quality of life.

The Shepherd Centre in Casula, in my electorate of Werriwa, runs a community preschool where one-third of the cohort have hearing loss and the other two-thirds have normal hearing abilities. It's a great example of a model that represents the power of early intervention. It allows deaf children to get the best possible start to their education while navigating the challenge that hearing loss presents. Graduates of the early intervention program have better than average language outcomes compared to their normal hearing children. My niece Kelly was one who graduated some decades ago and now leads a fulfilling life because of what they provided. I congratulate Dr Jim Hungerford, CEO of the Shepherd Centre, and his team for creating and maintaining a long history in improving education and social outcomes for children who are deaf or who have hearing loss.