Page 3180 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 11 September 1991
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through its echelons and organs within the ethnic community. This state cultural power that the Labor Party has wielded so much in our community is wielded sometimes in a manner which is not always compatible with the ethnic diversity of our nation.
Mr Speaker, there are things that the Labor Party has to live down in this country, particularly the disgraceful pursuit of Croatians in 1972, the pogrom that went on across this country over a series of nights with raids on Croatian houses. Anyone who saw the recent Four Corners article on those Croatians denied justice would understand how careful we must be in giving state power to Labor governments with respect to licensing requirements for ethnic radio.
If Mrs Grassby is genuine, if she is really talking about a community based radio station out of a community culture, then it will be a hands-off creation in this community; and it will not be another ploy - I saw some nodding from the gallery to Mrs Grassby at the end of her speech - on the part of the Labor Party to squeeze votes out of the ethnic community. They have done that so successfully in the past; but that day, of course, is fading.
Mr Speaker, the Rally, of course, supports the motion. We support a motion that means that there will be a hands-off approach by any government to the licensing arrangements, and any influence on the Federal Minister for Communications, Mr Beazley, and others involved in licensing arrangements, needs to take into account the very necessary guarantees in constitutional terms of any of those private associations with respect to the management and running of a community based ethnic radio station.
I am quite sure - and let us have no doubt about it in this chamber - that the Labor Party will go for what it can get out of the grant of that licence. I have no doubt at all. So, let us face it. Let us be quite frank about it. I think the community has seen the day when the Labor Party argued, successfully for many years, that it stood for the disadvantaged immigrant. It certainly does not at the moment. It does not stand for much disadvantage in the community at all, as we well know.
The motion also provides for a move and pressures to be brought to bear on the Federal Government - it is implicit in the motion - to access the licence, to make it available. I trust that, if Mrs Grassby is truly community based, there will not be private machinations going on between the local Labor Party and their buddies on the hill to bring about this licence. The matter should be pursued in the open by this minority Government, for the time that it has left in governing the Territory, and then it should account to the people of this community in relation to its lobbying on the Federal Government.
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