Hakan Akyol.
Hakan Akyol assesses the factors in the success of the ECCV
unknown
17 February 2009
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mov (Quicktime);
7.3 MB
02min52sec
Akyol:
00:10
I know that a couple of other states have claimed that their ethnic communities council was at the first one, but I think in Victoria it was established in 1974 where a number of ethnic community leaders had sort of come together and said, Look we need to come together and work together and sort of raise our concerns and issues and as part of a normal democratic process. The following year that the national body of federation ethnic community council of Australia was established I think that was 75, may have been a year or so later. So, through that ethnic communities council of Victoria they began to have a sort of state-wide voice.
00:48
But I think some of the organisations individual organisations whether it was the Italians, the Greeks, the Jewish in terms of the ones that had been here from the you know the post World War 2, sort of migration period, the late 40s, 50s, 60s had started to have a greater voice in terms of seeing that they had rights and then along with their responsible because they also had rights and where they saw that there may have been discrimination whether it was blatant racism or whether it was of a systemic sort of barriers that they need to be addressed.
01:25
The change in terms of the national policy moving away from assimilation into integration to multi-cultural policy obviously provided a sort of a catalyst for that sort of to developing further, particularly when funding became available in terms of funding of community development of social work type positions with ethnic community organisations.
01:50
There was pretty much sort of bipartisan support there was so stronger leadership on at the political level but also some very good sort of leaders at the time, whilst they advocated generally the needs of and would make a strong argument and strong delegations for the powers that be, they also were very much pitched their language and their words in a way that was inclusive. That; look weve got issues here but were going to be part of the reset of the society, we want to contribute. I think we in other jurisdictions at times, the advocacy has come out to so strongly in sort of one direction, (UNCLEAR 02:36) rights but not about responsibility, but we want to be a part of this society etcetera. So its a combination I think of some strong leadership by at the political level, strong and good sort of sound leadership in terms of the ethnic community leaders.
02:52
End transcript
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