Impact magazine asked a group of people from diverse backgrounds to reflect on what Australia Day means to them…

Norma Medawar is a refugee from Syria. She recently became an Australian citizen.

I arrived in Australia in 2015 as a refugee from Syria seeking safety and a chance to rebuild my life after fleeing the civil war in Syria.

I recently became a citizen because it was a way of showing my commitment to this country.

So, for me, Australia Day is about my citizenship and all that represents.

Norma Medawar

My life now revolves around this country. As I citizen, I get to vote and have a say in the way the country is run – which is important to me. In Syria that was never the case.

Celebrating Australia Day makes us stop and think about all of the advantages we have in this country. This year, I will celebrate the day with a small gathering of family and friends.

In 2022 I made my first visit home to Syria since I left in the middle of the civil war. It triggered was an overwhelming mix of emotions.

I felt happiness at seeing my father, I felt nostalgic about the sights and smells of my homeland so familiar from my childhood.

But I also felt sadness at the conditions in which so many people are living and concern about the future of the country.

The recent fall of the Assad regime has given people in Syria hope for the future, but things are still uncertain, and many people have difficult lives.

When I was in Syria, across the country there were electricity shortages with power on only one hour in five.

There were also shortages of petrol, gas and bread and many Syrians are struggling because of rising prices. The average monthly salary is just $A35. I read that 90 per cent of people in Syria are living below the poverty line.

But there was also a divide between places where the war was remote – which seem wealthy with hotels and bars everywhere – and other places badly affected by the war where there is poverty and homelessness. And I saw children aged just 10, 11 or 12 working.

I met a woman and her daughter whose son had been killed in the war. She was living on a pension of 60,000 Syrian pounds a month, or $A20. With the cost of living in Syria the way it is, that is not enough to buy food, let alone anything else. I don’t know how she was surviving.

Despite all this, most Syrians remain resilient and people seem to have gotten used to the way things are.

So, Australia Day, for me, is about my citizenship and my commitment to this country and it is reminder of how lucky we are to live in a peaceful, harmonious society where there is support for people who live in difficult circumstances.

Katerina Hatzi is a young migrant from Greece

For many, Australia Day is also Australian citizenship ceremony day.

I remember when my own mother received her citizenship almost two years ago, after having been in Australia for a decade.

She finally decided to do it and what a day it was! I felt so proud of her, and she was proud to have become an Australian.

That was a pivotal moment as it did not mean we have forgotten our motherland, Greece, but, rather, a moment that solidifies our allegiance to the country that has accepted us and has given us so much.

Australia Day should be a day during which we reflect on the past, we learn from it, but we also acknowledge the present and future, alongside all our achievements as a nation.

Many advocate that Australia Day should be no celebration. I partly agree, but I also believe that simply changing a date will not erase what happened when Captain Arthur Phillip raised the Union Jack flag at Sydney Cove.

Trying to make a historical event disappear is not a solution and it is not feasible.

We should, instead, utilise the day as an opportunity to promote Indigenous culture and history, and teach the younger generations about the atrocities of the past, so that, through learning and understanding, we can allow them to lead bright futures in this great country of ours.

We should also take the opportunity to come together, celebrate our diversity and honour multiculturalism, a vital and integral element of our nation.

Australians of all different backgrounds have achieved so much. The harmonious coexistence of the ethnic groups inhabiting our country is what makes us stand out.

We seem to be too preoccupied with the Australia Day debate, still creating division and a sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’, rather than trying to find ways to celebrate our country and also honour those indigenous to the land and their 65,000-year-old history.

For a migrant like me, Australia Day reminds me that I am included.

Australia Day for me means that I am part of this nation.

We must use this day to remind ourselves of why we all came to build our lives here.

Australia is indeed a lucky country: it gives us opportunity and it allows us to be accepted into a society that embraces our differences, no matter where we come from.

I understand that January 26 is a bitter day for many, and the reason why is very clear and respected.

But Australia Day to me is a day to honour those who suffered, accept the colonialist truth about Australia’s contemporary history, to learn and never forget.

So, let’s move forward and do better, without stopping ourselves from coming together on that one day to honour our country. As the song goes “I am, you are, we are Australian.”

We must continue to hold on to that sentiment.

Happy Australia Day.

Saw Thura is a recently arrived refugee from Myanmar

For me Australia Day is a symbol of the freedoms and legal protections we enjoy in this country.

I came to Australia last year as a refugee from Myanmar. I was forced to leave because I had been targeted by criminal gangs operating coercive scam factories on the Thai-Burma border.

I started as an activist with a small not-for-profit organisation supporting displaced refugees in our region, mainly persecuted minorities such as the Karen and Chin.

Our charity provided food and it ran classes for refugee children. We started out delivering food and other aid to some of the 11,000 refugees along the border. But then we also started trying to help people who had been trafficked and kidnapped by the scammer gangs operating in the region.

We believe there are more than 70,000 victims inside the scam centres. They come from a range of developing countries, including India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, the Philippines, Ethiopia, Uganda, Morrocco and other African nations.

They are forced to operate online and phone scams that steal money from people in wealthy countries. The scam operations are only possible because of the lack of accountable government in Myanmar.

Australia Day is a reminder to me that in Australia we have democracy and the rule of law. People here have rights and cannot be trafficked or exploited by criminals without sanction.

I know there is debate about the actual date of the Australia Day, but whatever the date, it is a day to celebrate the free, tolerant and democratic society we live in here in Australia.

Helen Truong’s parents arrived in Australia as refugees from Vietnam in the 1970s

Australia Day for me a time to reflect on how lucky we are to life in a successful multicultural society.

I am from an ethnic Chinese family. My parents came to Australia from Vietnam in the 1970s.

I grew up hearing stories of how dangerous and fearful it was leaving Vietnam on a boat. My mum would recount how the captain of the boat stole the radio out at sea and abandoned them, so they were without communication.

Luckily, another vessel rescued them and, somehow, they ended up in a refugee camp in Indonesia. All they could think about during this journey was whether they were going to live or die.

I had a bit of an identity crisis growing up in Melbourne. At times I was the target of racist remarks at school. Whenever we went out as a family, I‘d get embarrassed. Like going to Chadstone shopping centre, or going to the beach during summer, because we looked and spoke different to other people.

My mum always relied on me to translate if we went into a shop to buy something or ordering food at a restaurant. It felt like all the Caucasian people were looking at us. In hindsight they were probably looking as us because I was looking at them to see if they were looking at me.

I was extremely self-conscious of how we appeared in front of other people, and this actually affects me still to the day – my self-image. I think I got this from my mother. She was very conscious of ‘appearing normal’ in front of others. The only times I didn’t feel inferior and odd, is when we went to places like Springvale, Richmond, Chinatown, because there were a lot of Asians there. I felt like I could fit-in, and I looked like everyone else. It didn’t feel weird speaking Cantonese to my parents.

Reflecting on my childhood and growing up in Melbourne, I am incredibly proud of my history and would not change anything about my past. It has shaped who I am today. I love the multicultural society we live in now, and seeing new migrants awkwardly trying to fit in reminds me of how far the previous generation of migrants have come.