Page 2262 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 28 August 2007
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become the Minister for Multicultural Affairs and I decided that what was needed was for a government minister to go and talk to the communities first hand. I was also aware that that advisory council had its internal problems which were not resolvable. I was not prepared to continue with an advisory council that was dysfunctional and that did not represent the totality of people in the ACT.
Mr Pratt talked about the South Sudanese, a perfect example to which I will refer in a second. That community and the Hmongs and the Lao people, who are very small communities, had no access to government thinking through that ministerial advisory council. The paramount leaders, if they call themselves that—
Mr Pratt: They should have.
MR HARGREAVES: The point is that there are 90-odd communities. In the view of these leaders MACMA was a dysfunctional advisory council. I decided that I did not need the advice of this group constituted as it was.
Mr Pratt: But you could have replaced individuals, John.
MR HARGREAVES: Perhaps I could. (Second speaking period taken.) I needed to bring into the government’s thinking all the views of individual communities. I launched into a series of ministerial forums where I met, informally, almost all the communities and spoke to them about their needs, wants, desires and all those sorts of things. That culminated in a multicultural summit at the end of 2005 from which came a document entitled Multicultural strategy.
I did not go with this for two reasons: first, MACMA was very dysfunctional; and, second, I needed to see these communities first hand and they needed to see me first hand. When the government has done about as much as it can and it wants to hand over these issues to leaders of that community, it might well consider a further advisory council. I will not do that the moment but I will not rule it out in the future.
I will speak for the last time in this debate about the statue. The application of those funds elsewhere in the multicultural arena or anywhere in the capital arena would have been illegal. Those funds were part of the building costs appropriated for that purpose; they were not to be appropriated for anything else. Those funds had to be used in the context of that building, for artwork for that building. Because construction costs were under expended we had an opportunity to use those funds, but I could not apply them anywhere else.
I have said before in this chamber that all the financial arrangements were clearly on the table. If people wish to query the philosophy of that decision I have no quarrel with that and I am happy to argue with them, but the process was legitimate and it has been proven to be so. I refer, finally, to the South Sudanese, an issue that Mr Pratt talked about. We do not make specific allocations in the budget for specific communities unless it is within the context of certain grants, such as ethnic schools grants, multicultural grants and those sorts of things. Those things are done through application.
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