Page 2327 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 4 August 2021
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Sunday clothes and walked into the city and asked around until he found the parliament. He went to the front door very scared because he expected that he would meet a policeman at the front door and he would be kicked out. These were his cultural expectations from his homeland. However, when he approached the door, he was met by an usher who showed him to a waiting room.
He waited and was eventually taken to see his local MP, who wrote to the then Minister for Immigration, Harold Holt, who confirmed that the papers he had filled out for his wife to come had been lost as part of a shipment that went missing overseas. His local member was then able to help him arrange new papers, and shortly after—three years since he had left his wife and daughter—Nonna and Nonno were reunited and my five-year-old mother, Giovanna, arrived in Australia. That ordeal had lasting effects on Grandpa, and it was a shame that in the process of getting here and becoming Australian he had encountered such trouble. Grandma must have really worried if he was ever going to send for her. It must have been a very difficult time all round.
The assumptions of how governments and public servants and parliaments and police behave can be so incredibly different and are formed by our new Australians’ experiences of their countries of origin. Therefore, the work we do here to promote understanding of how the Assembly and ACT government work, that there is support and that there are grants and government help available, as Mr Braddock has mentioned, to people to assist them in settling here and maintaining their original cultures, as well as their Australian new culture, is vital to proper settlement for people into this, their new home. I genuinely support this motion and the intent to achieve this.
Regarding the community language schools here, that is also an important element of this motion. It seems, yet again, that the government is not paying attention to the details of policies set under the Stanhope era, which have not seemingly been refreshed or reassessed. The funding per head which community language schools receive has been at a standstill for about 10 years, I am told. In Melbourne, students learning parents’ mother tongue in a community language school are funded by the state government $245 per head, and from this funding comes the cost of both delivery as well as the rental premises.
In New South Wales, the funding is $131 per head plus free access to government school buildings, making this assistance at least equally as valuable as the funding in Victoria. Here in the ACT the funding is at a remarkable point of $90 per head and no free access to school buildings. In fact, groups here pay for the use of classrooms on the weekends and after hours.
The Community Language Schools Association under the able leadership of Mr Fuxin Le has 48 member community language schools and two member play schools. In Gungahlin alone there are 12 member schools, and the arrangement for six of those schools at Palmerston Primary School is not being renewed next year. I appeal to Minister Berry to assist via the Education Directorate to find them another local option if needed if they cannot continue at Palmerston for whatever reason. Currently the community language schools, particularly in Gungahlin, are under pressure,
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