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Carlo Carli on Ethnic diversity in Brunswick today

Carlo Carli and Mara Moustafine.

Created:

unknown

Date Added:

21 April 2009

Source:

source not available

Format:

mov (Quicktime);

File size:

24.1 MB

Length:

09min16sec

Transcript

Carli:

00:05

The proportion of people from – born overseas is dropping. It’s still the communities that have been large in the post-war which are still very large: Italians and Greeks in particular. The Lebanese are the third, they’re declining. Chinese have risen. We get a smattering of Africans, we get a smattering of – because we’ve got large numbers of rental housing, we get smattering of other groups. We’ve remained a bit of a centre for the Turkish community and the Iraqi community in terms of community life: restaurants and community centres and that. But actually not many people live in that area, they tend to live further north when they come in. So we still have ... that element’s still there.

00:48

So, it’s still noticeably strong in terms of ethnic communities and has that very multicultural feel, particularly Sydney Road. The Indian population’s obviously which is coming from two ends, the permanent migration and also the students that are living in the area, and that’s really revitalising parts of Sydney Road. It’s taken on a very Indian characteristic. So the ethnic communities are still there and still present. But there’s probably not as strong a sense of solidarity or the work that’s – that used to happen, they don’t all work in the same factories and the clothing factories are gone . So one group might be ... the Indians are large proportion of the students or the Chinese large proportion work in small business.

01:39

And so there’s probably not as much engagement with them on – if you like on a class basis, but the Council’s incredibly concerned that we respect and support the diversity and so there’s a lot of cultural activities that are obviously often promoted by the Council and to some extent by the State Government. There’s a a big effort to celebrate the ethnic diversity in cultural form, which means you know, not just the restaurants but the musical activities and feast days and all of that, which in a certain sense has an economic spin off, because that’s why a lot of people come and visit the area because it’s got important and interesting cultural events.

02:32

My interest as an MP has been around a lot of issues, that were really common to the ethnic communities, were probably where it’s most dramatically changed has been in language teaching in the schools. Thirteen years ago it was still considered a really good form for schools to have a lot of languages and to teach them well. Realistically now, the primary schools have largely abandoned teaching languages. If you teach Arabic it’s very hard to get middle class parents into the schools. So whereas languages once were seen as a way of building support in the local community that’s no longer the case.

03:22

The expectation of a lot of the new parents in the area in terms of schools is more likely to be music programs. The emphasis is still schools, schools are really the core of that community but what’s being demanded has shifted so it’s gone from languages to particularly music programs and probably computer based type teaching and I’ve worked very hard to ensure that our schools are really well-equipped. We’ve got a lot of –we’re very strong in those areas. So the other area I suppose that’s been really changing has been the – even though we have a fairly strong age demographic, it’s decreasing. I do a lot of work with the various aged communities, of which a large proportion are of ethnic background, I mean a large proportion of the aged are Italian and Greeks.

04:24

And I think increasingly what we’re being asked to do locally is to deal with issues that reflect the disproportionate number of people between the ages of 18 and 30 that’s come into the area. One of those is public transport and I worked within government for seven years on public transport so we’re very well equipped with public transport, but it’s almost impossible to satisfy, it’s one of those “how long is a piece of string?” But increasingly we’re getting the demand in terms of that group –they’re more concerned about issues that I suppose are iconic. Like, you know, unlike other areas a lot of our correspondence and people talking to me will be about for example genetically modified crops. It’s a big issue.

05:23

I take it up as a big issue, there’s not many grown in Brunswick but it’s iconic, it’s part of the change in trends, the environmental consciousness and we have a very strong environmental conscience tradition in – we have an environmental called CERES which was founded probably 30 years ago. We have made a big effort to reduce energy use so it’s not surprising that iconic issues sort of shoot out there, but they probably have more currency in that area than they do in many other areas. I suppose the other thing that’s really different is I think as a local MP I was almost the perfect person 13 years ago because I represented both if you like, the growing intellectual, well-educated cohort if you like, the people and the ethnic communities.

06:23

I think that’s probably less important now. The ethnic component has been less important. I mean what’s now coming in on top of that is the issues that really are facing the generation that’s between 18 and 30 and they’re an intriguing generation because they do have a high level of environmental consciousness, they’re political but not necessarily all that party political. They do respond very strongly to iconic issues. They’re very, very interested in issues of lifestyle and culture. And so the fact that we strongly support cultural programs in the area becomes quite important to ensure there’s a strong cultural life.

07:25

I suppose the other thing that’s interesting about them is they’re often, particularly the student ones, they’re quite poor. When we had poor migrant families, they were really about feeding the kids, whereas they’re now poor but they’ve got really high expectation values. And they expect to do really well out of life, so whatever they earn, they spend. So you know, they’re not poor in the sense that I used to think of poor people, they just don’t have a lot of money but they’ve got a lot of cultural capital, but they don’t have a lot of financial capital and I think that makes them very interesting as a group as well. So, I suppose I’m changing myself and how I respond to things partly as a result of that so I’ve gone from being less interested in plain working class factory–based type issues to one of interested in issues of lifestyle and environmental sustainability and those issues.

08:25

And it’s probably a development that it was going to happen anyway, but being the local MP I’ve seen myself become increasingly interested in issues of environmental sustainability, of energy management and probably less interested... For example, 13 years ago, I was a major spokesperson on tariffs and the survival of the clothing industry because that was the industry that my area lived on. Well there’s very little of that industry left. And I don’t to be a major spokesperson of that industry any more.

09:16

End transcript