Page 2258 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 28 August 2007
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MR PRATT: At the moment the South Sudanese community, which is in transit, is trying to settle into the ACT. We know that South Sudanese youth are having some difficulty settling in. When you talk to the pioneers of that community in the ACT they tell you that they are rather concerned about rendering much more assistance to their youth. They are concerned about the fact that they are getting only $1,000 to $2,000 to enable them to run their operations.
They have only one or two workers who cannot be paid. Operating costs for telephones and correspondence are simply non-existent. They have a lot of work to do. The elders of the South Sudanese community work rather closely with the police and community services to assist those young men at risk. Unfortunately, proportionately, there are too many in the community, so it is rather sad that this budget has not met what I think is an important need in that community.
The South Sudanese community is probably one of the more vulnerable groups within the broader multicultural community. I just hope that the minister can move down the track and see whether he can rectify that over the next six to 12 months. When we talk about government waste how can I go past the Grassby statue issue which we have often talked about? An amount of $76,000, which I imagine is capital funds left over from centre construction works, has been spent on that project.
Even within the multicultural centre other works or activity could surely have been undertaken. I know, for example, that community groups would have liked to have had a bit more support in the way of office infrastructure. I do not see why some of that funding could not have been allocated to those sorts of fit-out works, to make the multicultural centre a bit more diverse, to provide some additional services, and to support our multicultural communities. Instead that money was spent on the Grassby statue.
Today we have spoken about the process that led to the creation of that statue, so I do not need to go through it again. It is rather sad that money was spent on it at all. That money could well have been spent on other capital works activities in and around the multicultural centre, or on other more appropriate structural works around town. I would be surprised if there was universal support for that project. I very much doubt whether there was universal support in the multicultural community for that project. I am not referring to broader community debate about the Grassby statue; I am focusing merely on the multicultural debate.
Beyond that it is sad that there are no other initiatives. There are certainly no other initiatives in the budget. The minister has not rethought a decision he made some time ago to dissolve MACMA. I would have thought that the Office of Multicultural Affairs would have been better served by MACMA operating and providing the minister with sound advice. I sympathise with the minister as he might still be struggling with the old ACT Multicultural Council. I do not know where that is going but the news that we will lose that council is not good news. It is rather sad that that council will die through a process of natural selection. I would have thought there was room for the council and the forum, two independent groups, to provide services to their members but, alas, that will not be the case.
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