Page 3440 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 23 September 2015
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celebrated. Now in its 20th year, the festival grows from strength to strength and is continually striving to ensure that all in our community are able to visit and participate fully throughout this annual three-day event.
Specialised areas throughout the festival footprint provide a welcome respite for children and older people from the popular activities happening throughout the event. The festival is not only a space for food, culture and performance but also provides an arena for dialogue and engagement for all participants. We are especially blessed that our diplomatic missions, their staff and families so enthusiastically engage with the Multicultural Festival and with the various Canberra communities with roots in another country or culture.
This year we saw the return of the much welcomed Windows to the World program of embassy and high commission open days which are held in September and October to coincide with Floriade. This will be the second Windows to the World program in Canberra. The inaugural Windows to the World program in 2013 was a wonderful success and again highlighted the uniqueness of our city and especially our connectedness, with more than 100 embassies and high commissions here in Canberra.
While we admire our glimpse of the world through his unique Windows to the World program, we are also mindful that these international diplomatic missions mean that our city is also the window through which the rest of the world gets a glimpse of what Canberra and the rest of Australia has to offer. Spectaculars such as the AFC Asian Cup and the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 provided a recent international platform whereby we were able to showcase Canberra and what it has to offer to the rest of the country and the world.
As well as being a government that promotes events and celebrates our rich cultural diversity, we are a government dedicated to providing accessible and responsive services for all Canberrans, and this is reflected in our government’s multicultural framework. This guides and supports ACT government directorates to incorporate multicultural objectives into government policies and to place greater emphasis on Canberra’s ever growing and diverse multicultural community.
There has been extensive consultation with local multicultural communities. Consultations for the next multicultural framework included submissions for the capital culture discussion paper and consultations through the 2014 one Canberra multicultural symposium and the 2014 ACT multicultural summit. Implementation of the actions identified in the framework will ensure Canberra continues to be an inclusive and cohesive society, a society which draws on its cultural and linguistic diversity to enhance the social, cultural, economic and civic development of the ACT and the wellbeing of all Canberrans.
There were many achievements under the last ACT multicultural strategy with some highlights including: the development of the many voices ACT language policy, which supports ACT government directorates in developing effective communication between staff and clients to improve service delivery to all Canberrans; an Australian first, the ACT services access card, was launched on 5 September 2011 and provides improved and easier access to a range of ACT government services, including concessional public transport, education, legal and healthcare services to asylum
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