Page 87 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 12 February 2019
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
MR HANSON (Murrumbidgee) (4.16): I was not intending to speak, but the smear on the federal Liberals is worth noting. I make the brief point that the policies adopted by the Labor Party and the Greens federally led to 8,000 children being locked up. Since the Liberal Party has come into government federally, that situation has been addressed and there are now no children locked up.
While you on that side of the chamber want to grandstand, criticise and smear, the 8,000 children were locked up as a result of the policies adopted by the Labor Party and the Greens. We have a very different view of the rhetoric compared to the reality. The reality is that there are now no children locked up. Your mess has been cleaned up.
Ms Stephen-Smith interjecting—
MR HANSON: You locked 8,000 kids up.
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The question before us is in relation to the matter of public importance.
MS ORR (Yerrabi) (4.17): I am pleased to rise today and reaffirm the comments of our Minister for Multicultural Affairs in speaking to the importance of supporting Canberra’s multicultural community. Canberra is an inclusive community where diversity is valued and everyone belongs, and a city which is healthy and accessible now and into the future. Our cultural landscape is populated and shaped by people moving here from more than 180 countries across the globe, under the guardianship of our traditional owners. The ACT is currently home to more than 400,000 people, and about half of our city’s residents have at least one parent born overseas.
Within Australia’s seat of democracy and diplomacy, almost a quarter of us live in a household where a non-English language is spoken at home. As families, couples and friends sit down and converse at dinner tables each night across our urban populace, we can only imagine the joys of conversations in Polish, Farsi, Mandarin and Vietnamese, as well as myriad other languages.
What a wonderful asset the strength of languages is, as Canberra continues to engage and cement itself as a global entity in the spheres of science, tourism, sporting excellence, business and technology. With this in mind, the ACT government will in the coming months enact our city’s ACT languages services policy. After extensive community consultation and collaboration, the policy provides a platform for Canberrans to continue to utilise, capitalise on and access support to ensure that mother tongue languages are protected and encouraged for younger Canberrans, older Canberrans and all Canberrans.
Appropriately, one of the key pillars of this year’s Multicultural Festival is a focus on raising awareness of Canberra as a multilingual city. I hope many of you will visit the languages showcase on Saturday at 2 pm.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video