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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 3 Hansard (23 October) . . Page.. 4045 ..
Mr Pratt
: On the point of order, I claim that that is an imputation-and lower than a snake's belly in a wheel rut, Mr Deputy Speaker.MR DEPUTY SPEAKER
: It is an imputation. Withdraw it, Mr Hargreaves. I will uphold the point of order.MR HARGREAVES
: In the interests of peace and tranquillity, Mr Deputy Speaker, I withdraw it.MR DEPUTY SPEAKER
: Then we can get on with the debate.MR HARGREAVES
: Instead of driving wedges between the various groups in the multicultural community in the ACT, Mr Pratt should offer to work with the government to heal any rifts and further the cause of living peacefully and respectfully with other cultural groups in the ACT. Mr Pratt has been exposed for what he is: he is lazy, he has not done his homework, he does not know what the government are doing and he is totally disconnected from the cultural community in this town.MR STEFANIAK
(4.45): I rise to support on this MPI: the lack of support given to the multicultural community by the ACT government. As somebody who has been around this place a while, I am a little amazed at how some things have panned out over the last two years. My recollection of before then is that a lot of support was given to the community by governments and oppositions, all the way back to self-government, and for very good reason.Canberra is a truly multicultural city. There are 160 different nationalities here. At the current count, 28 per cent of persons in Canberra came from overseas. If anything, it was a little bit higher in years gone by because of the great influx of migrants post World War II. Now that those migrants are getting into second, third and fourth generation families, a lot of people have been born here.
It is a huge multicultural society, and we have benefited greatly from the proliferation of different national ethnic restaurants over the last 25 years and the rich festivals we have had over the years. A lot of money has been put into those by a number of governments, including the one Mr Hargreaves was bagging.
Governments should be wary of being divisive or superpolitical in relation to multiculturalism in Canberra. What might be seen as an attempt to back one group or section of the community against the other should be avoided at all costs. The ACT is a very tolerant society; Mr Pratt could not think of any attacks on the mosque at Yarralumla.
There have been one or two incidents involving the National Jewish Centre down at Forrest, but they may have had nothing to do with multicultural issues. We have been blessed in Canberra, since it started, with a very tolerant society. A number of members of the Greek community made a huge contribution here in the 1920s, and in the post-war period thousands of persons came from various overseas countries to our country, and there were significant waves after that.
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