Page 3178 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 11 September 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
degree to which it offers foreign language training. There is some; it is not enough; it is pathetically inadequate. I would want to see part of the role of an ethnic broadcasting station as bringing pressure on our main public broadcaster to do some of the same. The more, the better.
There are so many groups. One group is in trouble today. I recognised the point that Mrs Grassby made about the Croatian community. There will be other communities in trouble tomorrow and we want to be sure that all of them are represented. So, I strongly endorse Mrs Grassby's comments.
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (12.13): I would like to begin by saying that the Liberals support this unequivocally, but I would like to bring the debate back to what Mrs Grassby is proposing. What Dr Kinloch said is all very well, of course; but what Mrs Grassby is proposing is that we support the establishment of a community based multicultural radio station - not that the ABC or commercial radio or somebody else should do it, although I do not disagree that they should. We need to be clear on what this motion is and what the members of the Assembly are being asked to support. I do support it totally.
I have discussed with members of the ethnic community over a long period ways and means by which, when we were in government, we might have been able to support them in this endeavour. The reasons are manifold. I believe that Mrs Grassby traversed very well the reasons why there ought to be such a radio station in Canberra. If she had not done so, I would have mentioned - and I will anyway - the needs of our older ethnic people who, for more reasons than one, can become quite isolated from this community to which they have contributed a great deal during their lifetimes. As they become older they do tend to retire from the community; they do tend to become isolated.
This is one way that they can continue to be part of the community, to be informed on what is going on; not only informed on what is going on elsewhere in the world, where there is strife and turmoil, where they have relatives and others, and have a deep and abiding interest in what is going on, but informed on what is going on here, on what is happening in this community, on what the issues are, come election time, so that they can understand. That is a very compelling argument, but there is a further argument than that.
This is now a multicultural society. We originals, Anglo-Saxons, have gained enormously, in many ways, from the fact that we now have a multicultural society. We can continue to do so because some of us have an interest in what is going on in the rest of the world too, and some of us have an interest in foreign languages and in foreign cultures. If we had a multicultural station of the kind that is being proposed here that was broadcasting in Russian, in
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .