Access And Equity Failures Ignored By Hardgrave

Laurie Ferguson - Shadow Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs

Media Statement - 16 May 2002

While the Charter poses the challenge of responding to the cultural and linguistic diversity of our multicultural society, the Annual Report is almost entirely lacking in empirical information.

In his media statement Minister Hardgrave's wrongly claims that "all Commonwealth portfolio agencies contributed" to the Report. In fact, a total of five portfolio agencies - the Australia Council, the National Archives, the National Gallery, the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission and Questacon - failed to submit any return at all.

A further six agencies - including Defence, DOFA and Environment Australia - commented on their performance as employers of staff but made no reference to their roles as policy advisers, regulators, service providers or purchasers of services.

Feedback to the Opposition from ethnic organisations suggests that portfolio agencies do not take seriously enough their obligations under the Charter. Centrelink is mentioned as the most obvious exception to this trend. Given this, it is simply not good enough for Minister Hardgrave to assert that everything is hunky dory, when agencies can get away with saying that they were too busy moving office to think about their obligations to our multicultural community.