Page 768 - Week 02 - Thursday, 23 February 2012
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Rosta Bartolo and his colleagues from the Sicilian Association at the Multicultural Festival. They are always there with their cannoli, which are very bad for you but very good at the same time. I think that we see in them people who have come to Australia and who have made a great personal achievement and a great personal impact but a wider impact on the community. I think it is something that we should pause from time to time to pay tribute to.
But the community sometimes is let down when there is a lack of funding for some of the important work that is done and the tenuous links to government that could best help their aims. This is particularly the case with the low funding that the language schools have received and from time to time the poor treatment that some of the communities have received at the hands of the ACT government. I think a stand-out example is the treatment of the French-Australian preschool that for two or three years was on tenterhooks waiting for the government to make a decision about where they would move them. They did not want to move from their present site but, under the guidance of the ACT department of education, for a very long time Mr Barr seemed to be intent on moving them along. I am glad that that matter was resolved and that the French-Australian preschool was not forced to move another time and that they now have a permanent home and some security of tenure.
The importance of multiculturalism in the ACT and the impact that it has on the community cannot be understated. I think that we would be a much poorer place if we were still the meat and three boiled veg people that we were when we grew up in the 1950s and 1960s. And we have much to applaud in the multicultural community, from the food, the music and the dancing to a wider cultural awareness but also in the ACT, as is mainly the case across Australia, a greater level of tolerance, welcoming and openness to cultural diversity and cultural difference. I congratulate the members of the ACT community on their contribution to our multicultural society.
MS BURCH (Brindabella—Minister for Community Services, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Women and Minister for Gaming and Racing) (3.21): I welcome this matter of public importance because our multicultural community, as is recognised by many here, is an absolutely great asset to our community. We as a government recognise the enormous contribution that the multicultural community has made and continues to make here in the ACT.
By this I mean the contribution that thousands of individuals and hundreds of local community groups with many members across the ACT make to our community each and every day. From the coffee that we drink and the restaurants that we dine at, to the homes that we live in and the retail stores that provide our supplies, our city, the national capital, was built on the foundation of cultural diversity. I think it would be an interesting exercise for each of us to count the different nationalities that we come across in our daily lives. This is testament to the welcoming environment that Canberra provides to all people of all backgrounds.
Data from the ABS reports that in 2006 almost one-quarter of the ACT’s population was made up of people born overseas. I am sure that that proportion has at least been maintained since then. By far the biggest group is composed of those people born in the UK, followed by those from New Zealand, China and India.
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