Page 3749 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 23 November 2022
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Cultural Centre cultural function, in honour of and fundraising for the temple at Florey, in my electorate.
This week I met with members from the Nepalese community to look at their interests and their expanding community—the third most populous multicultural community in Canberra. A unique event was a women’s empowerment workshop, hosted by OLA, which included safety lessons from ACT Policing to women from the CALD community, and a local mechanic as well to show them how to do basic car maintenance.
Just recently, in the last week, it was a great pleasure to speak with Professor Anthony from the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture about the engagement of that faith with the rest of the broader community and, in particular, the Indigenous community.
Then, most recently, it was a delight to attend the Canberra Kangaroos awards night last Sunday. This is a soccer group, formed by Afghan refugees several years ago, which has embraced people from all different cultures. It is part of the Canberra state league. It was wonderful to be there again, in the company of Minister Davidson, on Sunday at the Notaras Multicultural Centre, to celebrate their achievements: starting from scratch only four or five years ago, and now with a view to forming a women’s team from the CALD community.
I want to commend our multicultural community for the way they open themselves up to the broader community, the way they keep their distinctiveness but want to celebrate that with the rest of this wonderful Canberra community. I want to show my appreciation to them and my commitment to them as shadow minister for multicultural affairs. They are going to be a growing influence in our community, particularly with skilled immigration contributing so much to our population growth. It is my delight, again, to be on this journey with many of them.
Health—men’s health
MS STEPHEN-SMITH (Kurrajong—Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Minister for Families and Community Services and Minister for Health) (5.53): I want to reflect briefly on the conversation that we had today in relation to men’s health and to say that, obviously, I expected that there would be a focus on male suicide in that conversation. It is a tragedy how many men we lose to suicide in the ACT and across Australia.
I even expected that there would be imputations made that somehow I do not really care that much about the issue of men’s health because I do not think we need or our health system would benefit from a men’s health plan, or because I pointed out that, in fact, a lot of the work that Ms Castley was calling for in substance was already being progressed under the myriad other plans, policies and strategies that we have in place, which do indeed take a gender focus.
What I had not expected, Madam Speaker, was that Mr Parton would talk about shoes. As Mr Rattenbury pointed out, grief is a strange thing and different things trigger different emotions. The mention of shoes took me back to late 2015 and a trip to
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video