Page 770 - Week 02 - Thursday, 23 February 2012
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It is an event that gives a short glimpse into the real make-up of our culturally diverse city. Your neighbour, your friend or client, the public servant, doctor or accountant by day who is serving the community are keen to share their culture, traditions, dance and music for at least several days a year during the festival. We, in turn, have the opportunity to appreciate, share and understand the different cultural traditions that shape the way Canberrans live their lives. This all contributes to a socially harmonious and safe community that we can all enjoy.
We are fortunate in the ACT to have a well-developed, robust and contributing multicultural sector that is made up of first-class service providers and advocacy community organisations. I would like to take the opportunity to pay tribute to Companion House, the Migrant and Refugee Settlement Service, the Multicultural Women’s Advocacy Group and the Canberra Multicultural Community Forum. The service that Sam Wong provides through the Canberra Multicultural Community Forum has already been mentioned. Then we have the Multicultural Youth Service. These organisations make a great contribution to our city by delivering services to those most disadvantaged and, in many cases, isolated in our community.
I would also like to put on record the government’s appreciation of the enormous work that the 100 or so multicultural radio broadcasters across the two multicultural radio stations do in our community. These are broadcast in different languages that reach many in our community. They are particularly valuable for those who do not speak English. This is the only source of information that they receive outside their homes.
I would also like to take the opportunity to highlight the valuable contribution that the 40 or so local language schools make to our community—that group of teachers and parents of those 2,000 students who, week in and week out, study another language or two above their commitments to mainstream school.
We have a generation of Canberrans who are bilingual or multilingual and who make a unique contribution to the economic and cultural life of our city. Indeed, one of the most exciting components of a multicultural city is witnessing how the coming together of people from different backgrounds filters down through the generations and how these people hailing from different countries but born in Australia keep their cultures alive.
I often visit many groups. Recently I went to the Mon new year celebrations. We expect to see the elders—the older people of these communities—carrying on their traditions. But what heartens me through the Mon groups and the Indian groups—indeed, all the groups throughout the Multicultural Festival—is when you see the wee little ones, the ones that are two, three and five years of age, coming through and making sure that they too pick up and understand their culture. That is an absolute sign of the strength of these communities and the strength of what we have created here in Canberra.
There is no doubt that the ACT is a multicultural community that is inclusive. The multicultural community of Canberra does not just relate to migrants from non-
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