a multicultural Research Library

Making multicultural Australia

Search the complete site: ... Sitemap » ... Links to other sites »

multicultural Audio »

Category: Audio Interviews »

Subject: Cultural Studies »

thumbnail

Ethnic rights

Des Storer.

Des Storer speaks on the preparation of the seminar "Ethnic Rights Power and Participation".

Created:

1994

Date Added:

17 July 2002

Source:

Interview for Making Multicultural Australia, 1994.

Format:

mov (Quicktime);

File size:

--

Length:

27 secs

Transcript

DES STORER
Deputy Secretary, Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, and former researcher, Centre for Urban Research and Action

When we were preparing the seminar for what became “Ethnic Rights, Power and Participation”, quite a lot of people were saying, for example, on the Italian communities “you won’t get people much to talk out about their particular concerns in a rights context, etc”. But by word of mouth, various people came to us...
We brought together people from social justice churchy groups, inner city active groups, and as many of the migrant ethnic communities we could at that particular time.

CONTINUATION OF INTERVIEW AS TEXT

We ran a series of seminars - it must have been early 1973 - and they got published later in a small little book called "Ethnic Rights, Power and Participation". (We also tried) to work with the unions and other people concerned in the industrial work force, and to work towards developing a similar sort of series to bring these people together, in what, I think late in 1973, was the Migrant Workers Conference.
We actually developed a paper called, "Towards a Multicultural Australia", and it was signed by about twenty people on the front which said these are the sorts of things we wanted. To my knowledge, it was one of the first times that that word multicultural had been used.

Interview for Making Multicultural Australia, 1994.