Page 111 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 15 February 2006
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cultural communities have got behind the Islamic community and rejected the vilification that that community has experienced in recent times.
With respect to the changes in the multicultural council and other representative bodies in the ACT, I can only say that representation is in the hands of the community itself. The community has its own destiny. However, the government will be determining what the taxpayer expects for its dollar and will be expressing that in future funding arrangements for whatever representative body that can prove, through the satisfaction criteria, that it can provide the services to the community. The ACT has the most inclusive multicultural community in the whole of the country. The people who think that multiculturalism is dead need come here and find out how wrong they are. I recommend the amendments and therefore the amended motion to the Assembly.
MR PRATT (Brindabella) (11.48): I stand to generally support Dr Foskey’s motion, although I cannot entirely agree with her point (3), which states:
(3) recognises the government’s avowed commitment to:
(a) promoting cultural diversity … and
(b) building a strong cohesive relationship …
I believe the government has stated that objective. They mean to have that objective in place, but an avowed commitment does imply concrete actions and results. I do not believe that we have seen all of those results in place. Certainly some sections of the multicultural community would not say that they have seen that.
Certainly the government has made some progress in multiculturalism over the last few years. There is no question about that. We have this strange paradox where there is clearly a lot of trouble in some sections of the multicultural community but at the same time the multicultural community looks quite healthy. We see some good performances as a consequence.
I support the government’s notion and Dr Foskey’s notion that multiculturalism is a very important part of our landscape. We hear so often lately, on the back of the Cronulla riots and other issues that have bedevilled Sydney’s society particularly in the last couple of years—not just the riots but other events too—that perhaps multiculturalism is an outdated notion and all we need to ever talk about is so-called assimilation and so-called integration as the means to ensure that we have social harmony.
I do not entirely agree with those views. Some of those views are far too simplistic. If you do not take care of multiculturalism and ensure that it stands alone as a component of your landscape, then there will be a lot of problems. You simply cannot say, “Do away with the so-called multicultural bureaucracy and everything will fall into place.”
On the other hand, what you do not want to have is multiculturalism institutionalised to such an extent that it becomes, in its own right, a bureaucracy and a bottomless pit for spending money and for perhaps causing the integrations to not generally occur. Integration will occur in time—over generations—and you do not want a multicultural bureaucracy which impedes that natural development in an emerging society.
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