Giuseppe and Maria Iemma arrived in Australia in 1960. The young couple, recently married, had departed their village in Calabria, what had been their whole world. Within a year their only child was born – a son, Maurizio, who became known outside the family as Morris. When Morris was six, the family moved from the inner-city to Beverly Hills in Sydney's southern suburbs, where they have lived all the years since. The Iemma parents both worked, a variety of jobs in car building, textiles, print shops. Getting and keeping work was often hard with English language difficulties.

Giuseppe had been a communist in a country which enjoyed the largest Communist Party membership outside the Iron Curtain. He did not abandon his faith in a new country. Both parents valued politics and political discussion. Morris Iemma grew up in a household where politics was the staple of discussion. More than discussion; it was a household which believed in collective action to protect the worker in his or her place of work and believed in the possibility of reform by political action. It was a household in which an emerging Gough Whitlam was the hero. Giuseppe took his son to Whitlam rallies. He kept a close eye on the Labor leader in newspapers. Television and radio delivered the Labor leader into the household. In 1974 the Iemmas took Australian citizenship as a tribute to their hero.