Page 766 - Week 02 - Thursday, 23 February 2012
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Events such as the Nara candle festival, which celebrates the Japanese festival of Obon and is a festival that worships and respects ancestors, are well attended every year, despite often the freezing cold. King O’Malley’s and PJ O’Reilly’s get into the spirit of Craic as they do their best to replicate the spirit of Dublin come St Patrick’s Day. And we all know that members from all walks of life are, at the very least, aware of many faith-based holidays such as Hanukkah, Eid, Diwali or Orthodox Christmas. We have some fine examples of great community organisations trying to inculcate an atmosphere of multiculturalism and mutual respect here in Canberra, and I believe that these organisations play a vitally important role in our community and contribute to our social fabric and our social capital.
In my own electorate of Ginninderra we see the Villaggio San Antonio, which was one of the forerunners, definitely in the ACT but across Australia, in providing culturally based and culturally sensitive aged care. Whilst initially established for the Italian community, because it is a culturally sensitive place, it is also a place where many other ethnic groups, cultural groups, like to settle their older parents and family members because they know that there will be cultural sensitivity to their needs, and as people grow older there are greater needs. Sometimes they lose facility with the language that they learned in their adult years and revert to the language of their birth.
The other great example of this is the Croatian village in Stirling. There are moves to create other culturally based retirement projects in the ACT, especially amongst the Chinese community.
The settling of refugees is something which the people of the ACT have a very proud history of, and I want to pay tribute to the Migrant and Refugee Settlement Services of the ACT for the great services that they provide to wave after wave of refugees arriving in the ACT. The organisation has had many names over its time and has had many people who have come and gone from it that I would like to pay tribute to. One of my own constituents who has been a longstanding stalwart of refugee resettlement, Bevill Purnell, is a person who comes to mind. Bevill has worked tirelessly over many years settling people from Kosovo and, more latterly, people from sub-Saharan Africa.
I also pay tribute to one of Canberra’s great stalwart citizens, Marion Le, whom I first met around a table in the formative days of the Indo-China Refugee Association, for the great work that was done by Marion and a great crew of volunteers who provided homes, sustenance, guidance and helped to assimilate hundreds of people in the Canberra community. The high regard in which Marion is held in the community is a testimony to that great work. Of course, being involved in organisations such as refugee settlement organisations often means that you do not make friends or you may burn bridges with some of your friends, but I think that the great strength of will and of advocacy on behalf of refugees by advocates like Marion Le are a testimony to the openness of our society and the extent to which we will go to look after others in the community.
There are other peak bodies that I would like to pay tribute to here today. The Canberra Tongan community has a very large presence in my electorate, in Belconnen. I remember the proud opening of their hall in Spence—it is probably more than 10
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