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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 10 Hansard (29 August) . . Page.. 3645 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

shower block had no privacy. There were flowerets on the wall and cement floors. I do not have any memory of grass in the camps. I was in a number of these camps. The only difference between where I was in Sydney and, say, Port Hedland is that the gates are locked at Port Hedland and other such camps.

The commonality of struggle that was shared between those people continues today. You only have to go into some of these cultural communities to understand that the common struggle bonds these people together. They need to be congratulated. They are trying to absorb themselves into a new land and often a new culture. They are trying to do so with quite a lot of adversity.

When we talk about multiculturalism, let us not forget the indigenous people of this land. We often forget them. When we think about multiculturalism, we talk about southern Europe, South America, Africa, China and Asia generally. We often forget that the indigenous people of this land have a culture different from that of the mainstream Anglo-Saxon people. It never ceases to amaze me the richness the indigenous people have in their languages, their practices, their religions and their dance. Sometimes I think we could learn a lesson from the gentle nature of these people.

Our oneness as Australians celebrates the uniqueness of each of the cultures which make up the Australian whole. We need to celebrate cultural diversities through the teaching of language and dance. We need to preserve them. I wonder whether or not the Attorney-General could treat us to some Polish music and dance. He probably could, but I would bet anything you like he could not do it as well as someone newly arrived from Poland.

You have to be careful. I know this from my contact with Filipino people and Lao people in my electorate. We run the risk that as kids grow in our Australian society they walk away from those things that make their culture unique. We need to make sure that we as a society resource the preservation of cultural differences. I congratulate the government for its approach through the office of multiculturalism to make sure there is at least some money around to do that. People like Nic Manikis do a pretty good job in trying to spread that resource around. It is obvious to me that those things will just die out. Like dinosaurs, they will disappear. We do not want to see that happen.

We are the envy of the world for the way we embrace our cultures. This is a polyglot society. We need to make sure that that continues. We have outlawed expressions like "wogs", "wops" and "Pommy bastards". That is a welcome thing. I spent the first 18 years of my life here fighting because people called me a Pommy bastard. It was probably somebody playing third grade for Collingwood. I fought with my fists against that. That should not happen now. Governments of all persuasions have worked very hard over recent years to prevent that. I think that is terrific.

Government programs to foster multiculturalism should not be trumpeted as successes. They should be givens. We should expect governments to do everything they can. We should highlight their failures and correct them, but we should not politicise the thing. It is a terrible thing for any government, opposition or crossbench to seek to make political mileage out of this issue. We should be working together on it. If we can put our guns on the table for five minutes and get together on this, we can show how well it can be done.

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