Speech deliv­ered at Aus­tralian Cit­i­zen­ship Cer­e­mo­ny, Waver­ley Coun­cil area, Syd­ney, New South Wales 31st Octo­ber 2015   by Alex Ryvchin, Pub­lic Affairs Direc­tor, Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry

First­ly, I’d like to con­vey my sin­cere grat­i­tude to May­or Sal­ly Betts for invit­ing me to speak today. I am deeply hon­oured and hum­bled to play some small part in today’s pro­ceed­ings. I’d also like to acknowl­edge the pas­sion­ate and tire­less Waver­ley coun­cil­lors and staff who do such an out­stand­ing job for the local com­mu­ni­ty. But I am most thrilled to be in the pres­ence of our newest Aus­tralians.
Twen­ty five years ago, I sat where you sit now. My fam­i­ly, it was the six of us, had arrived as refugees from the Sovi­et Union in Jan­u­ary 1988 and we set­tled in this area.
We arrived to a land that was entire­ly strange and unfa­mil­iar to us, where we had no friends or rela­tions, no Eng­lish lan­guage skills, no mon­ey, no pos­ses­sions of any val­ue. Just a few suit­cas­es of cloth­ing and some pho­to albums to remind us of long-dead rel­a­tives and the lives we left behind. We came with lit­tle more than the hope of a bet­ter life and ask­ing to be giv­en a fair go. Two years lat­er, we became Aus­tralians in this very room.
I was only a boy of sev­en that day, so I can’t tell you what I felt or what it meant to me at the time. Prob­a­bly, not very much. And for my par­ents and grand­par­ents, whose para­mount con­cern was with work­ing what­ev­er odd jobs they could find to scrape togeth­er enough mon­ey to send my broth­er and me to school each day, clothed and fed, it prob­a­bly didn’t mean that much either. Life’s urgent needs took prece­dence.
But when I reflect on that day, I know with absolute cer­tain­ty and con­vic­tion that that occa­sion was one of the great­est bless­ings I have expe­ri­enced. And to this day, being an Aus­tralian fills me with a sense of pride and for­tune that I nev­er take for grant­ed.
You will have come to Aus­tralia from diverse lands and have sought a life here for a vari­ety of rea­sons. For us, we sought refuge here. We came from a place where we were denied basic free­doms – the free­dom to prac­tise our reli­gion, the free­dom to enter cer­tain pro­fes­sions and study at cer­tain uni­ver­si­ties because of our eth­nic­i­ty, and per­haps the cru­ellest injus­tice of all, for a long time, we were denied the free­dom even to leave that coun­try and seek a new life in a land where we could live with dig­ni­ty and be free from per­se­cu­tion.
We found these free­doms in Aus­tralia. My broth­er and I were blessed with some­thing that our ances­tors could only have dreamed of – to be raised in a soci­ety where we were judged on what we said and what we did, on what we achieved, on the sub­stance of our char­ac­ters, rather than to be pre­judged based on the eth­nic­i­ty which was stamped into our iden­ti­ty papers.
While many of the free­doms that we found in this coun­try are a fea­ture of west­ern lib­er­al democ­ra­cies gen­er­al­ly, there are qual­i­ties to this soci­ety that are unique­ly its own, that are unique­ly Aus­tralian.
And there is no more Aus­tralian con­cept than the idea of a fair go.
If you come to this land and are will­ing to work hard and con­tribute to its wel­fare and its pros­per­i­ty, you will be giv­en a fair go. Skin colour, eth­nic ori­gins, coun­try of birth, reli­gious beliefs, none of these things will be a bar­ri­er to your suc­cess. You will be giv­en a fair go. And the extent of your suc­cess will be deter­mined only by how hard you’re will­ing to work, the for­tune that befalls you and the tal­ents that you choose to devel­op. Do not under­es­ti­mate the sig­nif­i­cance of being giv­en a fair go. It is a price­less gift, and now it is yours.
Equal­ly, by becom­ing Aus­tralians, we accept the duty to uphold the free­doms grant­ed to us and to pro­tect the val­ues under­pin­ning our soci­ety – val­ues such as democ­ra­cy, tol­er­ance, mutu­al respect. And that won­der­ful­ly and unique­ly Aus­tralian val­ue, “mate­ship” – which cap­tures the essence of the rela­tion­ship between Aus­tralians. It denotes cama­raderie, friend­ship, and most impor­tant­ly, equal­i­ty. For­mer Prime Min­is­ter John Howard said it holds a “hal­lowed place in the Aus­tralian lan­guage,” while the his­to­ri­an, Nick Dyren­furth calls it “our de fac­to reli­gion.”
My fel­low Aus­tralians, my new mates, I offer my sin­cer­est con­grat­u­la­tions on this beau­ti­ful occa­sion. Just as its sig­nif­i­cance did not imme­di­ate­ly dawn on me, per­haps it will pass you by today as well. But I hope that, as time goes on and you estab­lish new lives in this great land of ours, you will cher­ish all that this nation has to offer, that you will seek to enhance it through your efforts, that you will dis­cov­er and be mes­merised by its nat­ur­al beau­ty and the beau­ty of its peo­ple and that you will feel the same pride and love for Aus­tralia that I do.
Thank you and good luck.