Page 148 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 16 February 2011
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Mr Hargreaves knows about his own party’s festival that he is so proud about. Then again, a 10-day event celebrating cultures from all around the world whittled down to a 2½-day festival with signature events, as Ms Burch puts it, perhaps implies a demotion of status. Mr Hargreaves has let the proverbial cat out of the bag—ACT multicultural festival and not National Multicultural Festival. Another theory might include the possibility that he has put this motion forth as a way to defend the legacy of Al Grassby, as he is so fond of doing around this time of the year. I add that this is perhaps the third February sitting tradition that we seem to have had in this Assembly.
In paragraph (2) Mr Hargreaves makes reference to promoting harmony and respect within the ACT community while he well and truly knows that he, personally, has been the main culprit in causing disharmony and lack of respect within the multicultural community through the commissioning and installation of a statue of Al Grassby in the foyer of the Theo Notaras Multicultural Centre. This initiative of Mr Hargreaves has caused and is still causing major controversy in our community and is still an open sore—
Mr Barr: No, I don’t think your resident galah in the pet shop is talking about the Grassby statue.
MR DOSZPOT: Thank you, Mr Barr. It is still an open sore for many of the ACT community who have been calling on the ACT Labor government to formally apologise to the Mackay family for what remains one of the most shameful episodes in Australian political history. While the presence of Al Grassby’s statue remains in the foyer of the Theo Notaras Multicultural Centre, it is a stain on the ACT’s multicultural history.
Mr Hargreaves not only refused calls for the statue’s removal or to apologise to the Mackay family while he was the Minister for Multicultural Affairs, but he now from his backbench position taunts the multicultural community with talk of promoting harmony and respect. My office still receives phone calls from constituents urging me to get Mr Hargreaves and the Labor Party and the Chief Minister to address the issues that they have been calling on them to address since 2005.
Mr Hargreaves’s motion is convoluted at best, to the point of implying that the Multicultural Festival is synonymous with the cultural, ethnic and religious diversity of our city. It is fallacious reasoning, and the attempt to gel the Stanhope government with the festival and with our city’s diversity is sinister in its opportunism. Truth be said, it was the Canberra Liberals through the Carnell government that established the Multicultural Festival in Canberra. Mr Hargreaves made no mention of that—it was all just patting on the back his fellow party members and the ACT government because he thinks that is the way to do it. It is because of Mrs Carnell’s foresight that we have today a tradition of diversity and openness in our city.
At a time when notions of multiculturalism are being touted in countries like the UK, Germany and the US as failed projects, it is important that we do not treat this topic in piecemeal fashion in the manner our colleagues across the floor are proposing today. With approximately 25 per cent of Canberrans being born overseas and 15 per cent speaking a language other than English at home, we owe it to these Canberrans to not
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