Page 2415 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 22 August 2006
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12 months. These initiatives include providing opportunities for more direct engagement with local multicultural community groups, establishing Australia’s first multicultural centre, staging a successful multicultural festival, and moving to project funding for the multicultural sector in response to the needs identified in last year’s multicultural summit.
As we plan to set the strategic framework within which we will work to respond to the many challenges that confront our culturally diverse community, we must be mindful of the need to ensure, as we have done with other initiatives in this area, that the best possible outcome is achieved. I commend to members the motion to extend the time for the handing down of the new multicultural strategy from mid-2006 to December 2006.
MR PRATT (Brindabella) (10.43): I note the government’s concern that it has not been able to meet its June deadline as outlined by the Assembly in February 2006. We must take the minister at face value when he says that the reason for the delay in the development of this strategy is that the government has not yet received all the feedback from community groups. I find it unusual that over a six-month period it has not yet received that feedback. If what the government is saying is correct we accept the government’s advice at face value.
What has the minister done to encourage that consultation and feedback? What percentage of the key groups in the multicultural community is yet to respond? If we knew that we would be a little more comfortable with where the government is taking this strategy. I remind members that in February the Assembly asked the minister to come up with a strategy after a couple of pretty tumultuous years in the management of multiculturalism.
The ACT’s Multicultural Council came right off the tracks and I know it has been difficult for the minister and his Office of Multicultural Affairs to deal with that curly issue. We have also seen the rising of the new multicultural forums, which means there is yet another player in the field to whom the government must talk. If the government wants to reinforce its success I support such a move, but this strategy has been a long time coming.
I encourage the minister, the government and the Office of Multicultural Affairs to hasten the preparation of its strategy so we can quickly see the back of the tensions we have been seeing in the ACT multicultural community. I believe that multicultural groups in the ACT get on particularly well but the politics have been extremely messy and damaging and that has caused a lot of angst. The government is finally taking action, which has been a long time coming. I ask the minister to sit down with these people, to sort them out and to get multiculturalism back on an even keel.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (10.46): I am happy to support this motion as long as the consultation that occurs as a result of an extension of time is not just broad consultation where we find that the loudest voices are usually the voices that are listened to. I would like to see the government talking to groups that do not have a voice in our multicultural communities and that often do not have a voice in the Anglo-Saxon community. I am referring to the voices of women and in particular to the voices of children and young people.
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