Page 3439 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 23 September 2015
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Aboriginal Australians had set the foundation for this region as a meeting place and a place of welcome long before 1788. Since its establishment as the nation’s capital territory, Canberra has continued to build on this foundation and since the opening of parliament here in 1927, elected representatives from across the new nation have seen this as our national meeting place.
Post-war migration, a labour shortage in Canberra and the pull of the Snowy Mountains hydro-electric scheme well and truly cemented this region’s multicultural identity. Many of the more than 100,000 people from over 30 countries who came to work on the Snowy Mountains project later decided to settle in Canberra and make this city their home. This particular project was one of the greatest post-war challenges to race relations and multiculturalism. Many of the people working on this nation-building project for Australia hailed from countries that were at war either with us or each other less than 10 years prior to when the Snowy Mountains hydro-electric scheme started.
There were also 150 tradesmen from Europe, mostly from Germany, who came to Canberra in the 1950s to work for AV Jennings and became fondly known as the Jennings Germans. When Sir Albert Jennings’s company was faced with building a vast number of government houses in Canberra in the early 1950s during the critical labour shortage of the era, he recruited skilled workers from Europe. They built over 1,800 homes in O’Connor, Ainslie, Narrabundah and Yarralumla.
This post-war migration showed that people from all sorts of varying backgrounds can come together, work together, live together, celebrate together and, above all, achieve great things together. They showed we can learn and benefit from new cultures becoming part of our multicultural mix. It paved the way for refugees from conflicts around the world to settle here and be part of our nation building.
That Aussie attitude of giving others a fair go deserves credit for including respect and dignity, the basic elements of building a community. Contemporary Canberra continues to lead this nation on inclusion and equality. We have become a city of firsts. The ACT Human Rights Act, which was introduced in 2004, was the first of its kind in Australia. It forms the foundation for an effective social inclusion and equality agenda. It means we have a legal imperative, not only a moral one, to do everything we can to ensure all citizens can be active participants across all aspects of our society.
We were the first trial site under the rollout of the national disability insurance scheme that covers an entire jurisdiction. We were also the first entire state or territory jurisdiction in Australia to become a refugee welcome zone earlier this year. The generosity and support we extend to migrants, refugees and humanitarian entrants and their successful settlement and engagement across our community bear witness to our willingness and capacity to embrace difference and to flourish from it.
It is, therefore, fitting that Canberra seize every opportunity to showcase its leadership on inclusiveness and equality. This we do in so many ways. Each February we host the largest food and cultural extravaganza in our nation through our National Multicultural Festival. This is where our diversity and multicultural success are truly
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