Page 882 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 24 February 2009
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MR HARGREAVES: Yes, the multicultural festival has a significant and highly positive impact on the multicultural and broader community in Canberra. We see how significant this event is to the multicultural community from the fact that many of the community groups begin preparations six months prior to the event. Some groups even prepare all year round.
The government recognises that the festival has a unique role in promoting sustainable multicultural communities in the ACT. That is why the government is proud to support, through the multicultural grants, multicultural groups in their preparations and participation in the festival. Many multicultural groups put forward proposals specifically to enable them to participate, or participate to a greater extent, in the festival. These applicants frequently emphasise the unique opportunity the festival provides them to express their cultural heritage and share precious traditions with the wider community.
The festival truly is a vehicle for enhancing and promoting harmony and social cohesion. It is so successful in this because of its breadth and depth in and across the community, particularly the multicultural communities in the ACT. Year after year, it is wonderful to see how the festival is truly the main formal vehicle in the ACT to encourage the passing on of cultural traditions. The festival provides a significant opportunity for cultural traditions to be showcased and developed.
The ability for intergenerational participation in the festival is also of great significance to the multicultural community. Indeed, the festival encourages active community participation of all ages. For example, grandmothers proudly make exquisite traditional costumes for their grandchildren who perform on stages. Families get together to prepare foods to share with the wider community.
Of course, I recognise that community groups regularly get together to celebrate and pass on their own cultural traditions. However, the festival provides a significant platform for these to be shared with the broader community. Through the festival, languages, dances and food are wholeheartedly shared and embraced by all sectors of the community.
The festival is unique in the way it brings together so many different parts of the community, including, significantly, the diplomatic missions, the ACT government and multicultural communities. Every year, we have increasing numbers of diplomatic missions and multicultural community groups wanting to participate. This year we had 65 diplomatic missions. Compare that with about three or four only a few years ago. What we are seeing, in fact, is the diplomatic community and the multicultural community making sure that people keep in touch with their contemporary homeland, that they do not lose access to their contemporary homeland.
It is all well and good to preserve the languages here but to freeze them in time is not good enough. We need to make sure that young people can speak the contemporary language. I suggest that, with Mr Seselja’s command of Croatian, if he went back to Croatia now, he may have a little difficulty speaking Croatian in the villages, largely because he is illiterate in Croatian; we know that. He can be taught. But we need to
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