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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 10 Hansard (29 August) . . Page.. 3643 ..

MRS BURKE (continuing):

The whole community is richer when we share each other's cultures. This sharing leads to greater understanding and harmony and makes the Australian cultural, social and economic landscape stronger and more resilient. Margaret Mead, the eminent US anthropologist, said:

As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one culture should sharpen our own ability to scrutinise more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.

Mead's comment is very insightful. Australian society and culture are inextricably linked to those people who have come from all over the world to settle here during our short history.

Indeed, it is precisely because of those people who came to make Australia their home that we are who we are. Migrants brought winemaking skills that we here in the Canberra region are now using to build more opportunities to grow a viticulture industry. Migrants, with their understanding of different types of agriculture, enable Australia to boast some of the finest food production areas anywhere in the world. Migrants have helped Australia to utilise the bounty that is in the ground and extract it for the national benefit. And it was indeed migrants who brought with them understanding that we can all do things a little bit differently for the betterment of us all.

This government's commitment to multiculturalism is not new. In recent years we have worked cooperatively with the community to create programs that encourage Canberrans from multicultural backgrounds to maintain and express their cultural heritage and to participate fully in the social, economic and cultural life of the ACT. Thank heavens that we have embraced this, because we all benefit.

This government has done much over the past five years to open the doors and reap some of the benefits that are afforded to us by this diversity. The government has:

established the ACT Office of Multicultural and Community Affairs and the ACT Human Rights Office;

assisted long-term unemployed migrants with a work experience program which assists them in competing successfully in the job market;

established and supported the ACT Chief Minister's Multicultural Consultative Council to ensure that the ACT government's policy and program development processes benefit from input from the multicultural community;

addressed racism through such measures as the anti-racism contact officer network and anti-racism guidelines in schools to improve young people's awareness of multicultural issues; and

created and funded the National Multicultural Festival as an opportunity for the whole community to celebrate our cultural diversity.

Only last week we saw the launch of the new Multicultural Business Chamber, which will provide further opportunities to reap the benefits that our diverse backgrounds offers us all.

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