Page 106 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 15 February 2006
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He calls this next step progressive integration. I prefer to call it community connectedness, because it is a term with less baggage. I would love to read the whole quote, but I am going to run out of time if I do that. He wrote:
Fundamentally, progressive integration—
or community connectedness—
is about creating the single cohesive community where racial, ideological and religious diversity flourishes yet is supported by a common set of cultural principles taken both from the home society and valuable immigrant contributions. It’s not about homogeneity, but it is about a single shared feeling of community.
Australia, after Cronulla, we know, could be in the same situation. We are a young and diverse country and a wealthy and well-educated one. We have got a lot going for us. He continued:
Let’s move away from the condescending, gratuitous and self-serving lectures by wealthy celebrities …
I am not going to finish that sentence. What it boils down to is that there is diversity in diversity, and the government needs to pay heed to its community engagement guidelines and explore a range of ways of connecting with the various communities. In the same department as the minister for multicultural affairs heads is the community engagement unit. I am sure that they would be very happy to help develop a strategy for this.
Our motion calls for women and young people to be separately consulted, as well as consulted in their communities. The reason is that women in multicultural communities often do not have leadership. We do not often see them heading up their communities, organisations, but they do have a voice. And they must be heard. Often they need to be consulted separately.
Anybody who works in development overseas knows that you talk to the women separately if you want to hear about households and children. You also talk to young people separately. We need a project that mixes our young people up so that we do not find half of Canberra’s schoolchildren saying that Muslims are terrorists. We really need to make sure we nip that in the bud.
The motion asks the ACT government to come back to the Assembly with a strategy that we can employ to develop the next framework. This project is so important that the government needs to demonstrate how it will engage our diverse communities in the project. It is also important that our strategy highlights our commitment in the ACT to a society built on respect for human rights.
In the current worldwide political climate, the rights to free speech and political association are under attack; so we need to champion a diverse and pluralist society. A cohesive, connected society will not just happen. It needs a supportive community development approach to engage people within and across their cultural and ethnic groups. I see this as a policy of community connectedness and I believe that that was where our policies of multiculturalism were always intended to end up.
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