Concerns about the creation of a “little Damascus” in western Sydney because of an influx of Syrian refugees are unfounded, the federal government has said.
On Thursday the settlement services advisory council met for the first time since the federal government announced it would take 12,000 extra Syrian and Iraqi refugees. The new prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, the social services minister, Scott Morrison, and his assistant minister, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, were also present.
The government made the announcement last week, in response to the global humanitarian crisis created by the conflict in the Middle East. All 12,000 resettlement places will be permanent, and a yet-to-be-determined proportion will come in through the family reunion program.
According to the 2006 census, most (62%) Syrian Australians live in Sydney. A further 26% live in Melbourne, leaving just 12% in other parts of the country.
The special envoy on citizenship and a former immigration minister, Philip Ruddock, has warned against new migrants forming enclaves. “I don’t think it’s desirable to have people ‘ghettoing’, if I can use that term. So distribution of populations is important,” he said on Thursday.
But he highlighted the importance of refugees having existing support networks made up of people from their home countries.
“Sometimes you need to think about where communities already exist because they can be very important in supporting people who are coming,” he said.
Fierravanti-Wells, whose portfolio takes in multicultural affairs, does not think fears of “ghettoisation” are founded.
When asked by reporters on Thursday if concerns about the creation of a “little Damascus” were founded, Fierravanti-Wells said, “I don’t think that that is the case.
“There is a tendency for people, as a place of first settlement, to want to go where their friends and potentially relatives are as well. That doesn’t mean that they necessarily stay there, because they then consider job opportunities.”
The experts at Thursday’s meeting were looking at where the 12,000 refugees could be resettled, and what housing and employment options were available to them.
“That’s one of the things that the council was discussing this morning, where those potential [job] opportunities could be found around Australia, not necessarily just metropolitan Sydney and metropolitan Melbourne,” she said.
The Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, who like Fierravanti-Wells is the child of Italian migrants, said fears of ethnic enclaves were the kinds of concerns raised when his parents first arrived in Australia.
“I’ve heard language like that for decades,” he said. “Probably the same language directed at my parents and grandparents who came here. It is normal for people who want to share a culture and a language to share a location.
“These people will be the doctors and scientists and engineers of the future. Rather than using language that treats this issue as some sort of threat and plays right into the most base instincts of people who are worried about their own jobs and so on, let’s let people know what a great contribution they are going to make and how they are going to make our nation a richer one.”
The most recent census, from 2011, puts the number of Syrians in Australia at just under 8400, and the number of Iraqis at more than 48,100.
