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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 2298 ..

MR PRATT

background have. You can get an understanding of what this means if you talk to the elderly and to the staff who run the Croatian senior citizens centre.

Many of our elderly citizens who have come from other countries do not speak English particularly well. Generally speaking they can understand what is being said but they are not quite in a position to confidently express themselves in English. Communicating with the general population is a problem for them as they go about their routine business or even when they simply go out to enjoy themselves. A lot of these folk do not have the same sorts of extended family networks that they might have had when they were younger and so there is a need for the community to try to provide as much assistance as possible.

It should also be noted that a significant number of senior citizens with multicultural backgrounds, particularly those of World War II vintage, suffer from a lot of stress and trauma. When you talk to the communities you find that there are too often clashes here and there amongst the elderly. Often these people still have to deal with the trauma of what may have happened years ago and they need somebody to be able to talk to, somebody to talk them through. If the multicultural community that they belong to does not have those sorts of skills then we need to provide them, the community has to provide that sort of service. So I would encourage the government to get on with identifying, designing and deploying that capability.

I would remind the government that in 2001, as part of the many election promises that were made, the then Labor opposition said that they would allocate $150,000 annually for three years as part of a program to introduce multicultural aged care liaison officers. That has not happened-that is a broken promise. It remains to be seen whether the government intends to try to do something about that next year. But it will be been a pity to have lost a couple of years building up and putting that capability in place. So I would urge the government to at least, even if it is a little bit too late, carry out that promise, because there is a very important need in this area.

The Chief Minister's Department says that it has undertaken a study into a multicultural centre. I do not know what the results of that study are but they would appear to be inconclusive, given that the interim reports do not seem to indicate where the government might want to be going with this. I hope the government is still genuine about trying to do something about a multicultural centre.

A multicultural centre is needed for a number of reasons. Firstly, the ACT multicultural community ought to be able to be showcased, and what better place to do this than in its own centre. It is extremely important that this should happen. Also, a centre that the multicultural community can feel proud of and have some ownership of would certainly go a long way to helping the multicultural community administer itself and take care of its needs and requirements on a day-to-day basis.

I might add that a centre would certainly go a long way in helping to develop perhaps a more homogenous environment for the community. We certainly have seen in recent times splits within the community that we would not prefer to see. So I would encourage the government to start putting down some ironclad plans, and start talking to the community and giving them some idea of when, how and where this might occur. Sites have been looked at. The previous government looked at ideas and

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