Page 153 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 16 February 2011
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the food and dance spectacular at the Multicultural Festival is a great experience for the observer, ethnicity and cultural diversity should not merely be something abstract to be admired from a distance or in separation.
One very good example is from the United States—the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington DC, which celebrates community diversity and inclusion in a number of ways. The folklife festival “encourages visitors to learn, sing, dance, eat traditional foods and converse with people presented in the festival program”. The festival includes daily and evening programs of music, celebratory performance, crafts and cooking demonstrations, storytelling—which I think is an important thing—illustrations of workers’ culture, and narrative sessions for discussing cultural issues. It is all about furthering their understanding of multiculturalism. It is inclusive, participatory and interactive. It provides a promising practice where different mediums are used to educate and promote social inclusion.
I understand that this is a complex production, which requires a large team, funding and expertise, but it provides direction as to how we can energise and conserve multiculturalism in the ACT and set an example for the rest of Australia.
I believe it is essential that social inclusion and interaction are built into the vision of the festival. I believe it is time for the festival’s vision to mature to include interaction and participation as the main themes to be built on. While it is a wonderful thing to experience food from another community, as I have already said, it would be good to see the festival providing a more interactive experience. Including events such as Chinese New Year and Greek Glendi does add to the festival, because we get to experience very important occasions in the calendar for people from different communities, but that is again about expanding on that particular surface experience.
Multiculturalism is about celebrating and maintaining cultural diversity in our community. The Multicultural Festival has taken a large step towards showing that multiculturalism is alive and well in Canberra despite some politicians in Australia and overseas stating how it is a policy which has failed.
I will just refer to a couple of issues Mr Hargreaves mentioned which have received quite a bit of attention in the last couple of days. Mr Hargreaves mentioned the petition which was tabled by Senator Humphries. I think it is worth noting that in the media today we saw that the petition has actually been tabled on quite a few occasions by politicians from a whole lot of different parties—Labor, Liberal, National and independents. I think that should be noted.
I also note the questioning of allowing the families of people tragically killed while travelling by boat to Christmas Island to attend a funeral as a particularly appalling episode in relation to refugee issues. I will note that it was very positive to see Joe Hockey—as well as politicians from Labor, obviously—speak out in favour of people attending the funeral. It was good to see Joe Hockey support that, and I acknowledge that he did that.
The ACT Greens believe that local multicultural organisations and communities need to be consulted regarding the production of the festival. It is important that politicians
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