Canberra
I want to offer a special acknowledgment to the Founder and Chairman of these Awards, Mr Joseph Assaf
Joseph has made a towering contribution to multiculturalism and to the business community.
His deep commitment to the values of innovation, tolerance and social equity has become legendary.
That's why I've appointed Joseph to the Civil Society 20 group - the C20 - as part of our wider engagement process for the G20 meeting in Australia next year.
A big part of our effort will be showcasing Australia's multicultural success-story and how it helps us reach out to the world.
Multiculturalism is a success story.
Perhaps our greatest success as a modern nation.
And 25 years of the Ethnic Business Awards show just what that achievement means.
For a quarter of a century, we've been celebrating men and women who have come to this country with their worldly goods in a suitcase, with hands ready for hard work and heads busy with ambitious dreams.
Migrants who have founded the businesses that have shaped this nation.
The tradesmen and labourers who delivered nation-building infrastructure like the Snowy Hydro scheme.
The family construction companies that built our city suburbs, street by street, in the post-war boom years.
The mum-and-dad entrepreneurs who gave us great and enduring family-owned businesses, from the corner shop to our iconic department stores and shopping malls.
The men and women who have become property moguls and giants of manufacturing.
And the ones who have created the local jobs that have kept our towns and our regional economies humming.
And now, new generations of arrivals who are engaging the world, at the outer frontiers of new technologies.
Ethnic businesses have much to do with the prosperity, stability and strength of our economy.
While there are some who leave the land of their birth in desperation, fleeing war or persecution, escaping a nightmare, many others - including my family - make the life-changing decision as a clear choice.
As the fulfilment of a dream.
Through human history, migration has, to some extent, selected the risk-takers.
The men and women who see opportunity and seize it.
Those who see a glass half full and have a plan for the other half.
The very qualities so essential to business and entrepreneurialism.
Thirty per cent of small business owners operating in Australia today were born overseas.
Six of the top 10 Australian billionaires listed in BRW's Richest 200 list had a first- or second-generation migrant or refugee background.
The spirit, energy and ingenuity of our ethnic businessmen and women are things that cannot be taught, or bought.
They come from within.
But there are things governments can do to make the first steps of a new migrant steadier.
Things we can do as a generous and welcoming community, and which we have been doing for decades through programs like the successful Adult Migrant English Program.
But it is important that we also hold out a hand not just of welcome, but of help, to the children of those who have newly arrived.
The boys and girls who will design the cities of our tomorrow, manufacture the products of our future, dream up the innovations of the next century.
But before they embark on those lives, they need a good education.
And that means proficiency in English.
Our schools already offer effective and intensive English-language tuition.
But I believe we can do more.
That's why, as part of the Government's National Plan for School Improvement I'm determined to see greater resources go to students who speak languages other than English at home.
About 100,000 girls and boys stand to benefit from this additional funding.
It's an important investment.
An investment in the lives and prospects of individual boys and girls, at a time of profound transition in their lives.
I want to make sure that the new life we hold out to migrant children and their families is a life of genuine opportunity from the very start.
Of course, if proficiency in English is crucial for those making new homes here, proficiency in languages other than English - particularly the languages of Asia - is becoming essential to our national economic interest.
The Asian Century has dawned.
The centre of world economic activity is moving closer.
The share of world output generated within 10,000km of Australia's borders has doubled over the past half century.
It now accounts for more than a third of all global output.
This will rise to around half of all global output by 2030 - the year a child born today will finish high school.
I want that child - and every child of that generation - to have the chance to continuously study a priority Asian language throughout their years of schooling:
Mandarin, Hindi, Indonesian or Japanese.
Of course, the reality is that the example of multilingualism is already being set for us, daily by members of the ethnic business community.
Men and women fluent in the languages of our current and future trading partners, and fluent too in the cultural nuances so crucial in a global marketplace.
Our ethnic businessmen and women carried these skills with them when they came to Australia.
Now they pass them to their children and grandchildren.
It's an inheritance from which we all gain.
We've come a long way from the days when we tended to think of ourselves as a melting pot headed towards the goal of assimilation.
We no longer use that language.
And we no longer seek the uniformity that it dictated.
Migrants aren't forced to anglicise their names and disguise their backgrounds.
We can be proudly Lebanese-Australian.
Staunchly Greek-Australian.
We can observe Ramadan, or Hanukkah, or Vesak.
We can trace our family trees, preserve our faiths - or profess no faith at all - and feel safe in doing so.
We can carry forward our ancestors' names, pass on our mother tongues.
We can gather to mark Glendi or Diwali.
As the founder of these awards, Joseph Assaf, has pointed out, we need look no further than the Chinese and Indian diasporas to know that a growing number of individuals see themselves - and behave - as transnationals.
Proud Australians, but fully engaged in a wider world of commerce, culture and intellectual inquiry.
Australians, but with a special, and precious, entrée to the world economy.
With the cultural insights, the language skills and the contacts.
Joseph gave a speech some years ago in which he remarked that on Christmas Day, seven million phone calls were made from Australia.
Seven million living connections to the world beyond our shores.
That speech was delivered almost a decade ago.
These days, I imagine, the ‘living connection' is increasingly made through Skype.
The Christmas card has become a text message.
Indeed, the very first text message ever sent, back in 1992, contained just two words: “Merry Christmas”.
And if our social connections across the world are now maintained via swipe-screens and Facebook, business is increasingly conducted the same way: instantly; urgently, immediately.
The tyranny of distance has become the tyranny of 24/7.
It's a tyranny I suspect Joseph Assaf meets head-on, with gusto.
Most of you know his story - the archetypal migrant story.
The 22-year-old Lebanese migrant working in a factory and teaching himself English.
In time, founder of the communications agency Etcom.
Founder of these awards, 25 years ago.
A mover and shaker in ethnic radio, on countless boards and committees.
A sought-after conference speaker.
A passionate advocate for education.
But passionate, above all, about the precious gift of multiculturalism that defines us as a people.
Congratulations Joseph on 25 years of the Ethnic Business Awards.
And congratulations to all those ethnic businessmen and women whose stories and successes are so central to Australia's national story.
Our story.
Our unique contribution to the shape of the world.
Written - in pride and unity - together.