Page 387 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 12 February 2013
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festival footprint over the weekend. Anyone who was there would say that there was an incredibly positive feeling by all that attended. Yes, the crowds were large; we stretched the footprint as much as we could to allow some more comfort and movement through by participants.
We saw families with strollers; we saw older people. I saw a number of people with walking assistance with a ready-made built-in seat, so they were out and about as well. The older persons’ oasis was very popular. The children’s sanctuary we had this year was incredibly popular; indeed, it had its own face, with Jay Laga’aia, who is well known across all mediums of entertainment. I was particularly impressed by the number of three-year-olds who could actually recognise Jay on sight. My youngest is 19; I do not think Jay was on Play School when he was watching it, but he was certainly very popular indeed.
The food and dance spectacular, as always, was a great signature event. There were the Greek glendi and the Chinese new year. I know that Mr Smyth was there, as was Giulia Jones. I am not quite sure if Mrs Jones is still plucking out the glitter from her hair; I know it took me some time to get out all the glitter from that fabulous way of celebrating the Chinese new year.
Another new event we brought in this year was the African village. That was incredibly successful. They ran a program throughout the day and it was very popular with the young folk later on in the evening, as was the carnivale in the city.
One of the highlights for me was Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, who played at the Indigenous showcase. That was really something quite special—to see his live performance.
All in all, I would say that it was indeed a very successful weekend. I want to thank the team at the Office of Multicultural Affairs, which ran a fantastic program; the 100-plus volunteers who supported it, and also the community organisations. (Time expired.)
MADAM SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Ms Berry.
MS BERRY: What commitments has the government made to guarantee the future of the Multicultural Festival?
MS BURCH: I thank Ms Berry for her question. As a government we are indeed committed to fostering a multicultural city and events such as the festival and other initiatives ensure that that is carried into the future. The government acknowledge that the festival is an amazing showcase, but there are other things that we need to do and that we are doing to ensure that multiculturalism does not just stop at the festival, even though we all agree it is a fabulous weekend. Here in Canberra one in five were born overseas. We speak over 100 languages. So it is important that we respect and regard our multicultural community, which is why we put in a number of commitments in our election policies to support our multicultural community, as opposed to the Canberra Liberals, who seem to have forgotten it.
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