Letter Published In The Herald Sun 25 January 2007

Phong Nguyen, Chairman, ECCV

The Howard Government yesterday dumped the word multicultural affairs from its Ministry. You can remove the ‘M’ word but you can’t remove the reality that Victoria has one of the most successful multicultural societies in the world.

People should be free to celebrate their individual cultural background while uniting as Australian citizens around core values like democracy, the rule of law and love of Australia.

While we welcome the Government’s focus on citizenship, it needs to start thinking about equal citizenship. New migrants need help in employment, education and training so that citizenship is not just about passing history tests then being dumped in unemployment lines