Ms BURNET (Clark) – I want to talk about an event that I hosted with Senator Nick McKimm last Friday and we had our third community barbecue at Benjafield Park in Moonah. We had good weather and were amongst very good company, and what could be better than meeting people from many multicultural communities in the local park adjacent to the fabulous upgraded playground? At this barbie, there were locals who originally hailed from Africa, from Pakistan, from Nepal and other parts of the world. At least one-in-five residents in Glenorchy were born overseas, and there were people from 20-30 nationalities who call Glenorchy home.
I’d like to thank the staff from Senator McKim’s office and my own, and the various networks through the Multicultural Council of Tasmania and the Migrant Resource Centre (MRC) Tasmania, who helped make the event such a successful evening of networking.
By the way, what a fantastic result for MRC Tasmania, who raised a lot of awareness about racism in the various multicultural programs that they ran during the month of October, where there was the walk against racism. They raised between $80,000 and $90,000. It was a fantastic effort.
Both of these were really positive events, as was Diwali. The minister for multicultural communities was at the Diwali festival held at PW1 on the weekend.
Over the past few months, it’s been tough on refugee and migrant communities. There have been organised marches that have made people from migrant backgrounds, particularly people of colour, scared because of neo-Nazi undertones. There’s blatant racism occurring, there’s casual racism, and there’s systemic racism, and none of that is okay. We need to be fighting that at every turn in Tasmania.
On the ABC on Monday, there was a story about refugee and migrant women who, despite immigrating to Tasmania with teaching, nursing and other professional backgrounds, were unable to find work as their qualifications were not recognised in Australia. The brilliant organisation Be Hers – which you’re probably aware of, honourable Speaker – was helping those women to develop other skills. Unfortunately, a twist of fate is that many of the avenues where they’re developing those skills are threatened by cuts to TAFE courses, which is another terrible blow for those. That’s another reason why it’s so important to invest in TAFE.
I spoke to many interesting people, got to know new people, and made new friends last Friday. One of the constituents I spoke to, who wants to remain anonymous, is an enrolled nurse. She would love to work, but unfortunately can’t find work, strangely enough. You know, there’s a nursing shortage. She’s looking at GP clinics, she’s even willing to travel out to work in a country hospital for many kilometres per day of travel, but at the moment, she’s turned back at every turn, which is a real travesty for her and our state, really.
I hope that the barbecue we had would achieve many things. It’s important to make people feel welcome and also have positive action, so that’s what we want to continue to do. Senator McKim is also looking at hosting Let’s Talk about Racism in Tasmania. It’s sponsored by the Tasmanian government among other people. It will be on the 11 November at 5.30pm, so get in touch if anybody’s interested in coming along to that.
