Mentionsy

Work in Progress is a podcast to help skilled migrants rebuild their careers in a new country.

Mr. Pisarski, first of all congratulations on being appointed a member of the Order of Australia.

Having been part of a team of people that promoted a scheme called the National Rental Affordability Scheme.

Being part of a team promoting the national housing availability scheme was crucial.

Thanks to this, the social building sector in Australia has gained a powerful momentum to develop, creating a network of organisations that provide the most help to those who need it the most.

And especially today with the housing crisis in Australia, this is so important.

I spent, well, 40 years advocating for better housing.

Part of that within... I spent 40 years advocating for better housing.

Well my father was only 16 when he was captured at the end of the Warsaw Uprising.

My father was only 16 years old when he was imprisoned after the fall of the Warsaw Uprising.

He was always committed to justice and fairness and he always was a very generous man despite the hardship that he had seen.

How old was your father when he emigrated to Australia?

My father was then only 31 years old.

I just wonder, Mr Pisarski, if you have visited Warsaw and the museum?

For the first time in 1976 with my father and my English mother.

There was not yet the Museum of the Uprising and Poland was still, if I can put it that way, a Soviet square.

I remember that politics was then talked about with a whisper.

I came back there in 2013, exactly in the anniversary of the outbreak of the uprising.

The visit to the museum was shocking.

It is probably the most moving place I have ever been.

It gives an extraordinary imagination of what these people went through.

I think that the rest of the world still does not fully realize the magnitude of this tragedy.

Something that the rest of the world still doesn't properly recognize, I don't think.

Who want to make a real difference in their communities today?

You're really a citizen of the world because your dad was Polish, your mom British and you were... I've always felt like a citizen of the world.

Work in Progress is a podcast to help skilled migrants rebuild their careers in a new country.