Combating racism and a cultural inclusion were hot topics at this year’s Ethnic Communities’ Council of Victoria’s (ECCV) State Conference.
Politicians and community groups used the Conference to tackle some of the biggest issues facing migrant communities, but also took the time to champion multiculturalism’s overall success.
Premier Ted Baillieu heralded Victoria’s ethnic roots, saying it places us at a much higher position than our non-ethnic counterparts.
“Multiculturalism is our key competitive advantage – I stress that often and it is for us our gateway to the world,” Premier Baillieu told the conference.
Greens Federal Minister Adam Bandt chose to highlight the way policy and regulations become barriers when a recently arrived migrant struggles to enter the workforce, skilled or unskilled.
“Starting up one’s own business doesn’t just need a willingness to work, but an understanding of OHS (Occupational Health and Safety) and trading regulations, for example,” he said.
“I met a group of people who had trained to open up their own catering business, were all ready to go in terms of knowing how to cook and where they were going to sell, and the part of the process that they found just completely bewildering was filling out the council forms to apply for a permit. And the whole thing fell over on that basis.”
The conference was a good way to bring up issues that can sometimes go under the radar. It created a dialogue with the groups that see the issues first hand and the politicians that can help them solve the policy issues.
Questions varied from “how do we create a state with a multicultural identity rather than a state with a multicultural policy?” to “how can cultural identity be respected in a generic aged care system?”.
John Pandazopoulos talked on what he believes is still a discriminatory issue that hasn’t dissipated much. He called it the cultural diversity glass ceiling.
“If your name is Mohammad, at the moment it is harder to get a job than if your name was Bill,” he told Neos Kosmos.
“We still have this glass ceiling to break and it’s important that we talk about it.”
Mr Panadzopoulos says it’s an issue that surfaces time and time again and believes there is only so much government policy can do. Creating a good framework for promoting healthy multiculturalism is something that will occur over time.
His example centred on someone who spots a mosque or an orthodox church on his drive to work doesn’t think anything of it. A tolerance that comes over time.
“If we are to remove racism and discrimination and be more inclusive, and empower all of the community we really need to work on how we can move from a really good multicultural policy to embedded multiculturalism,” he said.
The conference key-note speaker, Macquarie University’s Pro Vice Chancellor Professor Gail Whiteford believes the way forward in how we think about multiculturalism is through a civic philosophy, and a presumption that people’s cultural identities have value.
She said quoted Tim Sothphomoassane in her speech, “multiculturalism isn’t just about culture but it’s a civic aspiration…just as all should enjoy civil and political rights regardless of ethnicity or race, so should all enjoy a presumption that their cultural identities have value”.
She warned that pushing problems onto the government about multiculturalism was not a long term solution and it was up to the public to understand the importance of it being a civic duty.