Page 86 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 12 February 2019
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focuses on the importance of supporting the ACT’s multicultural communities to ensure that everyone can reach their full potential. It highlights the ACT government’s commitment to building a community where everyone is respected, valued and included.
A number of programs and services exist across Canberra to support people with diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. A great highlight for me when I was Minister for Multicultural Affairs was learning about and meeting many community organisations and individuals who were recipients of the multicultural participation grants program.
This program highlights and promotes community participation, cultural diversity and inclusion in the ACT. To be truly an inclusive community we must support and provide opportunities for Canberra’s most vulnerable, including refugees and asylum seekers. There are, as Mr Rattenbury has outlined, significant limitations on how the current federal government supports refugees and asylum seekers. But an ACT Labor government and the ACT Labor Party will always stand up for the most vulnerable and will always support the ACT as a refugee welcome zone, a place that welcomes refugees and other migrants to our community.
In 2017 the ACT government expanded the eligibility criteria for the ACT apprenticeships and skilled capital programs to automatically include Canberrans from refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds, providing more employment opportunities, improving language skills and supporting workforce participation.
The ACT government funds a range of support services to work with migrants and refugees, ensuring that they can build new and better lives. Service partners like Companion House, Multicultural Youth Services and Migrant and Refugee Settlement Services work closely with the government to support those who have suffered persecution, torture and war-related trauma.
The ACT Labor government is proud of its record in making Canberra a more inclusive community. We are committed to multiculturalism and supporting culturally and linguistically diverse communities as they grow. Regardless of gender, race, faith or sexuality, Canberra is a city for everyone.
I want to acknowledge the tripartite support in this place for a diverse and inclusive Canberra that celebrates many different cultures and backgrounds. Sadly, the Liberals in the other place across the lake see multiculturalism as an opportunity to drive division and create fear. They are at it again this week, as Mr Rattenbury has said.
While I thank Mrs Kikkert for bringing this motion to the Assembly and for her absolute commitment and the absolute commitment of the Canberra Liberals to supporting multiculturalism, I would like to take this opportunity again to encourage Mrs Kikkert, Ms Lee and their fellow Canberra Liberals to share their support for a multicultural community with their Liberal colleagues on the hill, who unfortunately do not seem to share the same values, nor place the same importance on supporting and growing a diverse and inclusive Australia.
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