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Racial Disrimination - Inaugural Meeting (Excerpt)

Gough Whitlam.

Gough Whitlam, Prime Minister, 1972-75, speaking at Inaugural Meeting of the Ethnic Communities' Council of NSW, on the topic of Racial Discrimination.

Created:

1975

Date Added:

24 June 2002

Source:

Inaugural Meeting of the Ethnic Communitites' Council of NSW, Sydney, 27 July 1975

Format:

mov (Quicktime);

File size:

--

Length:

51 secs

Transcript

GOUGH WHITLAM
Prime Minister, 1972-75

Most of you will know that my government has worked steadily to eliminate discrimination of all kinds. We signed, in October 1966, an International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination. But we are now ratifying the International Convention. We will then be able to ask the Governor-General to sign the Bill, and the essential component of the Bill is that there will be an independent statutory authority to mediate in any dispute, when complaints of racial discrimination are made. And I know that you appreciate the fact that the Commissioner for Community Relations, that independent statutory authority, will be Mr Al Grassby.

CONTINUATION OF SPEECH AS TEXT

We have tried very hard to get it onto the statute books, we brought it in three times into the Senate. So then we started in the House of Representatives and went through a couple of months ago. It's taken a lot of effort and it's taken a long time.

From speech at Inaugural Meeting of the Ethnic Communities’ Council of NSW, Sydney, 27 July 1975.