South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas features in new book that tells the stories of second-generation migrant Australians.
Titled ‘At the Heart of Identity’, the book is a series of reflections from people sharing their families’ settlement journeys and their own search for identity.
Premier Malinauskas shares his family’s post war journey to Australia and his own childhood growing up in a migrant community.
He tells in the book how his family came to Australia in 1949 escaping war-torn Europe.
“At some point in the late 1930s in regional Hungary a 20-year-old widowed mother named Eta was left little choice but to temporarily leave her daughter with extended family while she sought work at a nearby town. It was a fateful moment. As World War II mercilessly engulfed Europe, Eta quickly found herself caught in the web of the war,” Premier Malinauskas says.
“Moved from camp to camp as forced labour for the Nazis, no parent could bear to imagine the pain, frustration and sense of desperation that Eta must have felt as every avenue to get back to her daughter was closed. Despite multiple efforts to return to Hungary, by the war’s end Eta had been stuck in a German munitions factory.
“As the Nazi regime collapsed and Eta closed that chapter of her life, her ambition for reunification with her daughter was again thwarted, this time by another peril in the form of communism. Having had her sole possession, a single bike, confiscated by the Russians at a key roadblock, Eta was again turned around and sent back to Germany,” he says.
Premier Malinauskas tells how his grandparents met after separately coming to Australia as refugees from the aftermath of WWII.
“When my grandparents got married, they bought a block of land on Trimmer Parade, Seaton, where they built their home and, for many years, operated a fish and chip shop. I distinctly remember as a young boy standing at that fish and chip shop my grandfather built with his own bare hands as he told me about the importance of taking opportunities,” he says.
I distinctly remember as a young boy standing at that fish and chip shop my grandfather built with his own bare hands as he told me about the importance of taking opportunities. He was always talking about opportunity – every opportunity you’ve got to grab.
“An equally clear memory is of the time I inquired about him becoming an Australian citizen and grandpa quickly rushing off to retrieve his naturalisation certificate. I cannot picture the certificate, but I can still feel the depth of meaning it had to him as a symbol of the opportunity this nation and this state had afforded Eta and himself.
“The desire of my grandparents, including Bob and Ursula May from my mum’s side, to seek, seize and share opportunity, even in the face of real hardship, has undoubtedly influenced my politics,” he says.
Premier Malinauskas says his family’s story is emblematic of Australia’s migration story.
“…this is a story about a young state in an even younger nation whose infectious optimism about the future gave it the courage to be open to new people looking for one thing above all else: opportunity, the same sort of opportunity our first re-settlers sought 112 years earlier and the exact same sort of opportunity new arrivals to our shores seek today,” he says.
Other contributors to the book are: former Socceroo Archie Thompson, who has a New Zealand-born father and mother from Papua New Guinea; federal MP Cassandra Fernando, whose parents are from Sri Lanka; leading contemporary artist Saidin Salkic; and architect Maru Jarockyj, whose parent were born in Ukraine.
Launched at Parliament House, in Canberra this week, as part of migrant and refugee settlement agency AMES Australia’s annual ‘Heartlands’ cultural project, the book is a reflection of Australia’s long and diverse history as a nation of migrants.
AMES CEO Cath Scarth said the book was timely at a point in history when polarisation and divisiveness are on the rise across the globe.
“Stories of settlement in Australia, no matter where you have come from, are things that unite us,” Ms Scarth said.
“These stories are reflection of how migrants have helped to build Australia and helped to create the successful brand of multiculturalism we enjoy along with the high levels of social cohesion that we have built,” she said.