Page 256 - Week 01 - Thursday, 16 February 2006
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see ethic violence; you will see religious fanaticism; and you will see all manner of things. It is horrible. You wonder why in fact it has got a G rating instead of a PG rating or even something bigger than that half the time when you see some of the footage of the abuses in jails and things like that. You think, “What on earth are people doing across the world?” When you reflect on what we are doing here in the National Multicultural Festival, you think, “Yes, this is where it is at.”
We will occasionally get little examples of racial vilification and racial violence. Let us not kid ourselves; it is not perfect. I reckon it is the closest thing to perfection this country has to offer. I have observed before in this place that part of it is because of the nature in which people from different cultures absorb right into every street in the town. We do not have enclaves and things like that.
It was put earlier by Mr Pratt that everybody is down at the same shopping centre on a Saturday afternoon. He is dead right. Go and have a look at the kids swimming teams, their track and field teams and their footy teams. You have got them in all shapes and sizes. So we do not have that sense of division. Every now and again you get some hothead who is really into violence; he is not into anything else. It has got nothing to do with racism. Every now and again you get a little collective of them. We have had a couple of two, three or four-member gangs running around. I know in Tuggeranong we had them at the interchange for a while. That is targeted and is stamped out, and on we get.
Generally speaking, this is a beautiful town to live in. It is a magnificent example to the rest of the world of how not only can we get on together and enjoy the fruits of opportunity this town offers but how we come together about 100 times a year and celebrate it. Can anybody tell me off the top of their head how many different functions you can think of overseas? They have got the Thaipusam ceremony. That is pretty good. There is the St Patrick’s Day parade in Chicago. That is good. I just ran out of examples. In this town I do not think a week goes by without some particular culture having some function where, if we want to go and enjoy their culture, we can do just that. And we do not do that much.
One of the other things that I have observed too, and one of the beauties of multiculturalism in this town, is that we do not talk about it much. Racial difference, religious difference and all that sort of thing are not a topic of conversation; we just live it here. Every now and again we do something really splendid like our National Multicultural Festival. I have to say it was an absolute privilege for me to have this portfolio and this responsibility to be able to facilitate and encourage those other wonderful people that you mentioned in your speech, Mr Deputy Speaker: the George Simpsons of this world, the Yersheena Nicholses of this world, the Nic Manikises of this world, the Vic Rebikoffs of this world and all the rest of these people who have done all those wonderful things. All I can do is facilitate them and encourage them and then, at the end of the day, we will celebrate.
Mr Deputy Speaker, you mentioned some other little glitches that may have happened. I assure the house that after this festival is over we are having a professional evaluation done of all of the processes to make sure that our assumptions are right and that the infrastructure is supported properly. Presumably we will talk about that at some other stage.
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