Page 780 - Week 02 - Thursday, 23 February 2012
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There is a whole heap of other activities that the multicultural community has engaged in. I urge people, if you have not done so, to go and have a look at the Canberra Multicultural Community Forum’s website and to get on board with their newsletters. It is mind-blowing what the community is actually doing for and within itself.
There is a train the trainer driving instructors course. This is for the Sudanese community to assist members in obtaining their drivers licences. There is another program to increase the number of interpreters. The support for White Nile Catering is interesting. This is a fledgling local company owned by five Sudanese women who have put their culinary skills to work to develop a catering business. I reckon it is great.
The Multicultural Women’s Advocacy employability program is funded by the ACT Office for Women, so it is a nice nexus between the Office for Women and the Office of Multicultural Affairs. It is great and it is specifically designed to give migrant and refugee women opportunities to find their voices, learn new skills, gain experience and confidence in areas of business, industry and employment and—get this—there are 30 women on the waiting list for that program. That is a measure of success of any program, in my view: it has got a waiting list. We are also trying to establish the ACT refugee and migrant employment task force. We have heaps of achievements. The transitional migrant housing program, which I introduced when I was minister, is going great guns. These are measures of success.
I could go on with the prepared speech, but I might just pause here and say what a fantastic Multicultural Festival it was this year—260,000 people, a wonderful achievement. It is the best yet. I was there for most of it and you could hardly move most of the time. It was great. There was a buzz around the festival. I was stopped by ambassadors and other people I have known for years who just wanted to tell me how wonderful they felt and how inclusive they felt it was. It was a family event.
It had a range of sponsors and all that, but I would just like to give a plug to a mate of mine, Lee Donnelly from Fyshwick Fresh Food Markets, who is part of a trade agreement to support it. It is okay to get government handouts for such things. But when a business comes behind a festival in the way the markets have come behind this one for so many years, because of the personal commitments of people like Lee Donnelly and Joe Giugni, I reckon we are on a winner with our community. It is about our community supporting each other. It is about our community celebrating their diversity and their multicultural nature, and it is a way that we can show people from interstate how Canberra can party when it feels like it.
I was talking to people from interstate who said that they came last year and that it was a blast but that this year was even better. So congratulations to the minister, to her staff and everybody behind it.
MR HANSON (Molonglo) (4.04): I would just like to follow up on the comments made by Mr Doszpot and Mr Hargreaves about a number of prominent Canberrans. First there is Mr Joe Giugni, who is a splendid Canberran. Mr Doszpot listed out a number of his achievements, including being ethnic businessman of the year. Joe is an
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