Page 3160 - Week 10 - Thursday, 17 September 2015
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large wave of post-war migrants from Europe, including Germans, Italians, Polish, Greeks and those from the first migration wave from the Balkan states, including from the former Yugoslavia. The wake of the Second World War and the economic migration which followed ensured that Canberra was a multicultural place from the beginning and this history has been played out in its role in establishing our opening and welcoming culture.
Due to our city’s proximity to the Snowy Mountains, a large number of skilled European workers migrated to Australia to work on the Snowy hydro scheme and subsequently relocated to Canberra when the project finished in the mid-1970s. In more recent years, the refugees migrating to Canberra have largely been a consequence of civil unrest and war in their respective parts of the world. In the 1970s we saw many Asian migrants and, significantly to Canberra, we received many Vietnamese refugees following the Vietnam War. Our Vietnamese community remains a vibrant and important part of our city.
In the 1980s Lebanese refugees came, fleeing unrest in the Middle East, and we saw an influx of refugees from Latin America. Some members in this place played a role in the acceptance of refugees from Kosovo as a result of the Balkan War in the early 1990s. Additional refugees were welcomed to Canberra since the turn of this century from Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq where civil war has displaced many people who were forced to flee from these countries. I am sure there are many more significant groups that I have missed, but we are a truly multicultural city, with Canberra’s culturally diverse population now comprising nearly 200 different nationalities and over a quarter of Canberra’s total population born overseas.
The way Civic is transformed each year for the National Multicultural Festival is perhaps the pinnacle of this multiculturalism, but it has been created over decades as we have offered a hand to people seeking an escape from conflicts overseas. Today the conflicts in Syria and Iraq have drawn an outpouring of public emotion for the devastation that this conflict is causing, and we are again in a position to extend a hand through the resettlement of people displaced by these conflicts.
My motion welcomes the federal government’s decision to accept an intake of 12,000 humanitarian entrants this financial year. I also welcome the generally unanimous way each parliament around the country has responded to this decision. It remains early days, but I can inform the Assembly that the networks that exist to respond at times like these are well established and will guide our actions in the coming weeks. I can inform members that officials from all jurisdictions met on Tuesday this week to discuss the approach and the arrangements to process the 12,000 refugees and welcome them into our communities. I understand that officials will continue to meet on a fortnightly basis to discuss this progress.
Locally, we have a first-class group of support services run by people highly skilled in supporting people to transition from unknowable trauma into our community: the Migrant and Refugee Settlement Services, Companion House, Canberra Refugee Support, the Multicultural Youth Services, Red Cross, Canberra Men’s Centre, and CatholicCare. I will be meeting with some of these groups tomorrow and look
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