Iraqi refugee Dr Ayad Jbreeta says that there is a saying in his country: ‘Today is worse than yesterday but it is better than tomorrow’.

He says it sums up the pain of a nation that has been wracked by war, repression and sectarian violence for decades.

The Second Sudanese Civil War took Richard Deng’s father and forced him to flee alone into the chaotic life of a refugee.

Almost two decades on, he is harnessing his memories of those experiences to develop mutual understanding between refugees and Australians.

As a small boy Peter Kon was forced on a month-long march across rugged bushland away from his family and village.

For the next 18-years a refugee camp would be his home and disease, starvation and death his constant companions.

But the South Sudanese refugee refused to give up his dream of a future.

“This country gave me everything that I dreamed of as a little girl but could never have achieved in my homeland.”

This is how Kosovar-Albanian refugee Mirisha Bowler sums up the experience of fleeing her war-torn homeland and building a new life in Australia.

A new swathe of data from the 2016 Census has produced an updated snapshot of Australia’s changing cultural diversity.

An estimated 258 million people currently live in a country other than that of their birth, a figure that is up from 173 million in 2000, and 102 million in 1980, according to the latest world snapshot of migration data.