I remember the story of one of our chefs from Sri Lanka.
He gets a call at night going, "Run! Run!"
They're coming, go. So he flees the house leaving behind his wife and children.
He doesn't know when he'll see his wife and children again, and he's left behind his family.
People he loves most in the world. His social status, his social connections, his education isn't recognised anywhere.
He's got nothing.
He gets on a boat to Australia, and he's at sea. He talks about the swells like mountains around him.
He thinks oh god I'm going to die here.
He gets rescued by Customs and ends up on Christmas Island. He asks how long will I be here?
He ends up in Curtin, how long will I be here?
He gets out of Curtin, he doesn't know the language, he's left his social connections and his life behind.
He's got nothing, everything he owns is in a Coles shopping bag.
He's released into the population.
He can't work, can't study, you have no connections, you don't know the language. Good luck.
This is not an ordinary cafe.
This is a cafe that hides a hundred stories, just like this.
Welcome to Parliment.
Pleased to announce the award for Food for Good 2017, Parliment on King.
It's a cafe and catering company where refugees and people new to Australia are paid and trained in hospitality.
By the time they leave, they'll be able to make a good coffee anywhere.
It's run on Sydney's popular hotspot, on King Street, Newtown.
Parliment also happens to be in the living room of this guy, Ravi Prasad.
A recovering advertisement executive who decided to drop it all when he became a parent.
My daughter who is now nearly six, at the time she was born I was head of digital strategy at a large agency.
After she was born, there were some health problems.
I had a moment where my wife has just given birth to my daughter,
she's in bed. And I'm watching my daughter and she stops breathing.
They call an emergency team and she's resuscitated.
Then she ends up seven days in intensive care before a doctor said, yes your daughter will live.
I went to my desk and I just think it's meaningless.
I look back at the work I've done over twenty years and there's nothing to show for it.
Hey remember that really good campaign six years ago? And they're like, nup!
Well that's my life's work, do you remember that? Nup.
So before you opened up the cafe, did you know anything about runnning cafes?
No I didn't know a damn thing!
SO how does someone end up with a living room that is a cafe?
First of all, a complete lack of common sense and second a degree of mindfulness.
I thought let's do something useful with this space, let's not just open a cafe let's do something useful.
I looked at what was going on, and I thought I could do something here.
Then a few months later we started training asylum seekers and refugees in hospitality skills/
Yes! Really? Yes
The first time I met Ravi, I made coffee and Ravi poured it down the sink.
I did it, and he poured it down the sink.
How many times did he do this?
He wanted me to make perfect latte.
After four times, Ravi said this is good.
Since it begun, Parliment has become the centre of this community of refugees passing in and out,
from all different countries around the world.
Honey is 21-years-old, but she has been through more than most.
My country has had 24 years of war. For me, I chose to come by boat, because that was the only option for me.
At the age of 17 she escaped wartorn Somalia, her journey took her to Indonesia and eventually Christmas Island.
Do a lot of Australians hear about Christmas Island in the news, but don't really know anything about it?
Yeah.
Can you give us an impression of what it's like, day in and day out?
Do you want to know Christmas Island, or do you want to know the darkest cave on Christmas Island?
I want to know both.
Alright. Christmas Island is really beautiful.
Then the darkest cave on Christmas Island?
That's the detention centres.
That one is a fence full of tears.
It's up to you if you want to appreciate being alive or if you just want to focus on the darkness and slowly kill yourself inside.
How do you find hope in that environment?
I always wanted to be an investigative journalist. SO every Friday I'd have my own newsletter.
I used to have minister's interview. Every week I pretend I'm in Canberra, interviewing the Immigration Minister.
If you could ask the Immigration Minister, what would you ask him?
To be a better human.
So one day I was sitting, and I saw this little four year old kid, and I asked his name. His name was Hamoudi.
I asked, what's wrong with you?
Then he asked me, when am I going to be out of here?
I couldn't answer that. But I said, one day you will be out of here. One day your mum will buy you a bicycle.
And he said, no. I don't think so.
Everytime someon's telling you a story, you're like oh my god. The harrowing things these people have been through.
They're there sitting across from you. They're there and they're just a person.
What I do here is pretty small. I mean look at the size of this place.
18sqm and the houes isn't evne that big!
We're going to use a wide-angle lense.It'll look massive. People will be like, yeah this guy lives in a mansion.
In the scale and scheme of things, this is small. But it's real.
In the life of the other person you're working and tlaking with, you can see that person. You can see the change.
When you sit down with somebody, at a dinner table or here, and you meet them, and talk to them and know them just as a human being,
within five minutes of talking to them, you forget that they're a refugee, asylum seeker, Muslim or anything else.
It will never be the same again.
The best thing I've learnt here is how to keep good friends.
I think I learnt that from Ravi.
Thanks so much for talking to us.