Stepan Kerkyasharian

Chancellor, Members of the Academic Board, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentleman, and Graduands.

It is a great honour for me to be with you on a day which is really your day. The achievement of a vision you had set for yourself and which you have obtained through hard work, determination and, in many cases through self sacrifice.

Each one of you has a story of hardship, or the occasional self doubt, but you persevered and here you are today.

You carry with you the aspirations of your family, your friends and those close to you who will now look at you with greater pride and admiration as you receive your degrees.

It does mean a lot.

Your degree is a passport to success in your chosen calling in life. Use it to good advantage. And remember. The only insurmountable barrier you will have in life is you. So never succumb to self doubt.

You are a key part of the future of this great democracy, multicultural Australia which has been created on the ashes of a White Australia Policy and which is now one of the most outstanding success stories of integration and cohesive coexistence of cultures and religions. We are a society which has accepted the errors of its ways and we acknowledge and pay our respects to the traditional owners of the land, of whose thirty thousand year history and culture, we are collectively the proud legatees.

Amongst you there are those who were born here, or whose parents were not born here or some of you who will return overseas. Whatever the circumstances you have experienced the success of a multi faith, multilingual, multiethnic or a multi racial society. You have felt its positive synergy.

BUT

As a person who has been the head of a Statutory Commission tasked with the promotion of harmony in a multicultural Society I have dealt at first hand with not only the positives but issues with the potential for disrupting that harmonious co-existence.

Community harmony has to be continuously nurtured. It requires constant vigilance and it is not the other person who is responsible; it is each and every one of us.

Many places in the world languish in a state of semi-permanent unrest because of lack of dialogue between people of different faiths.

Here in New South Wales, we are racing ahead of the world, in finding ways for people of all faiths to embrace, cooperate and work in unison for the common good, and not to just tolerate each other.

We owe it to all those Australians who have come here before us and contributed to the creation of a unique society where men and women are equal, where people of all faiths, and of no faith, are equal, according to the law and according to our culture, belief and practice.

I have been for the last two and a half decades the leader of an organisation which is part of ground-breaking social construction to build a society where everyone is welcome and free.

This great southern land has been on a gradual path of change towards that goal since some fishermen from Makassar first interacted with indigenous Australians in our north.

Those Asian fisher folk were Muslims, and they reached the Australian mainland some time before Captain James Cook’s so-called “discovery” of Australia in 1770.

The indigenous people were already very diverse in their religious beliefs but much more diversity was to come.

When the first new people came here in 1778, as part of the first fleet from England, suddenly the new land became even more multi-faith with Protestants, Catholics, Jews and others.

The Catholics struggled under a British rule dominated by Protestants. It is always worth remembering that in the earliest days of the colony the Catholics had to get specific approval from the Governor to conduct a mass.

But this was to be a new land where men and women would proclaim their equality and demand it.

Although everyone was forced to attend Anglican Church services there was constant clamour for change and by 1817 a Jewish burial society was formed. By 1820 cemetery space had been allocated for the Jewish community and the first religious services were conducted in private homes.

Meanwhile the Catholics had their first mass in 1803 when a convict priest was allowed to conduct a service on Sundays. However, after a year of this religious freedom, the Governor became intolerant and put a stop to the worship. Regular masses were not celebrated legally then until 1820.

But, by then the seeds of a tolerant multi-faith society had been sown.

A few Muslims were officially registered in those early years. But it would be another fifty years before the first significant wave of Muslims came to settle as camel drivers or cameleers.

History records this move as a turning point in the exploration and development of the Australian interior.  For nearly forty years they became the backbone of the Australian economy. They accompanied exploration parties, carrying supplies and materials where horses and oxen could not.

Evidence that those camel men attended to their religious duties still exists in the old corrugated iron mosque in Broken Hill in western New South Wales, thought to have been built in 1891.

Over the last two decades however, it has become increasingly difficult and challenging due to the fusion of unique Australian and international circumstances.

Whether by design or chance, since mass non Anglo-Celtic migration started in Australia, there were very few, if any Hindus or Muslims, who migrated. Although there was no policy for selecting on the basis of religion, it has always remained a mystery to me as to how we had tens of thousands of migrants from Egypt in the fifties and sixties; a predominantly Muslim populated country yet hardly any Muslims arrived. I leave that to future students of History to unravel.

Muslims started settling in large numbers from the mid 1970.s following the civil war in Lebanon, then Buddhists and later Hindus. Therefore we did not really become a religiously diverse society in the true sense of the word until early 1980-s.

Our move to welcome relatively large numbers of Muslims as immigrants coincided with an international resurgence of Islam in Western consciousness.

This was gradual in the early years but major events turned the spotlight harshly onto what we were trying to do here – in attempting to create a broadly multi-faith society that incorporates Muslims of many strains and many ethnic backgrounds.

The First Gulf War, the Invasion of Iraq, September Eleven, the invasion of Afghanistan and then Iraq again, the bombings in Bali, London and Spain have left Australian Muslims feeling in danger of being isolated or rejected.

However it has to be said that it has also made non Muslim Australians feel insecure and defensive, fearful of the spectre of the unknown and the unexpected act of terror.

The use of religion to pursue geo political agendas particularly through terrorism is a fearful and ultimately an uncontrollable destructive force.

The impact of seeing pictures of what happened in Nairobi in the last few days on ordinary Australians cannot be ignored. The words of the Taliban-linked militant group TTP Jandullah who claimed responsibility for the attack on the Christian worshipers in Pakistan, on the same day “they are the enemies of Islam, therefore we target them. We will continue our attacks on non-Muslim on Pakistani land” can only generate fear and which whether we are prepared to admit publicly or not, have an impact on our fellow Australians.

It does present us with a challenge which we have to collectively face and for which leaders of all religions in Australia have a collective responsibility.

Multiculturalism has held us in good stead through challenging times because it is a policy which instils security in the individual.

It says to a person, your religion, your ethnicity or your race is not a criterion by which your allegiance to Australia is judged.

However that is predicated on the fundamental issue of acceptance and respect.

One can only avail oneself of the benefit of multiculturalism if one in turn, accepts and respects the religion, ethnicity or race of one’s neighbour, colleague or the stranger one meets in the street.

If an ideology is used or misused for advancing geo-political agendas through violence then one must accept that the fear it generates will result in a hatred of that ideology. The same could be said for a religion.

The Prime Minister of Pakistan Mr Nawaz Sharif was right when he said “terrorists have no religion....” How can they? But, does that allay our fears?

It is this environment which threatens the success of our Multiculturalism.

This brings me to the fundamental issue which is not commonly discussed or pursued neither in public nor behind the scenes within the bureaucracy.

In responding to the local disruptive and disconcerting effects of global terrorism, one has to address not only the fears of minorities but also of the majority. Minorities suffer harassment and isolation, but the majority also suffer constant fear and a necessary curtailment of their liberties through laws designed to forestall terrorism.

Long inconvenient and intrusive safety precautions at airports to increased police powers are continued reminders to the majority that religion in being used to affect their personal lives and their freedoms.

The majority whether rightly or wrongly feel that they need to see a balanced approach to their rights as against the rights of minorities.

This is a direct challenge to the foundations of Multiculturalism!

We are proud of the freedoms we enjoy because of Multiculturalism. We are free to build churches, mosques, synagogues, temples, and ethno-specific or religious based schools.

It would be remiss of me at this point not to mention your Chancellor, Professor Peter Shergold who has played a fundamental role in the establishment and development of Multiculturalism in Australia going back to the days when he was the founding Director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs.

Therefore we have a responsibility to defend the foundations of Multiculturalism - Acceptance and respect of diversity.

This time round it is international events and geo-political manoeuvrings in the name of religion which are challenging this nation’s resolve.

It is incumbent on every leader of every religion inter alia, to openly and publicly promote respect for the right of people to have a religious belief other than theirs and to respect its legitimacy: to denounce persecution on the basis of religious beliefs.

You, the graduands are now joining the world from a position of advantage that this institution, the University of Western Sydney has bestowed on you through the excellent education you have received here complementing the life experience of a great cohesive multicultural society.

That advantage comes with a big responsibility as future leaders. Regardless of your chosen profession or career path you will always have a social responsibility and a leadership role due to your education.

You have to use it to good advantage for the benefit of all people wherever you may settle.

“Accept and respect diversity.”

When you leave this campus today, take that thought with you.