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Success of the ECCV

Hakan Akyol.

Hakan Akyol assesses the factors in the success of the ECCV

Created:

unknown

Date Added:

17 February 2009

Source:

source not available

Format:

mov (Quicktime);

File size:

7.3 MB

Length:

02min52sec

Transcript

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 we’ve got issues here but we’re 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 it’s 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