Margins to Mainstream: 5th World Conference on the Promotion of Mental Health and the Prevention of Mental Health and Behavioural Disorders

18/07/2008

by Dr Helen Szoke
Chief Executive
Victorian Equal Opportunity & Human Rights Commission

I wish to begin by paying my respects to the traditional owners of the land, and to pay respects to elders past and present.

I would also like to thank David Gregory from VECCI for his attendance today, and Commissioner George Lekakis, our partner through the Victorian Multicultural Commission. I am also delighted that Samuel Kout, President of the Sudanese Community Association of Australia is able to give us a first hand account of the issues facing the Sudanese community.

Finally I would like to acknowledge Mr Nick KOTSIRAS, Shadow Minister for Multicultural Affairs and Citizenship, and other distinguished guests ladies and gentlemen.

This research was commissioned originally in 2007, where through the general and informal avenues of consultation and communication, the challenges faced by people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in finding on going work were apparent.

One of the greatest challenges of the world of work is to actually understand how practices and procedures impact on people, and in particular, how they may impact on people because they are different and without any deliberate intent on the part of employers.

This state has had protections in place for the past thirty years which make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race or religion, amongst many other attributes, yet we know that this discrimination does occur.

Some of this is overt and plain uncouth and harmful. Name calling, isolation, exclusion, are all tactics in the workplace that are aligned to bullying behaviour and we know that there is still a long way to go to challenge those behaviours. Some times it happens on the basis of race, or gender or explicit demonstrations of a particular religious belief. We as a Commission receive many complaints of this nature and we utilise our processes to try to investigate and reach some conciliated outcome, and also to educate about the harm that is done by this sort of behaviour – both in terms of person cost but also in terms of business costs. Down time, lost hours of work through absenteeism, recruitment and training costs where people leave are all costs to business.

This sort of behaviour is worrying. But what is even more worrying is other sorts of behaviour that are evidence in this report. The secondary research that was undertaken for this report confirmed what was a consistent and common theme in the community consultations – that there is a high level of underemployment and unemployment amongst migrant and refugee communities, and at a time when the papers continue to be full of concerns about labour market shortages, skill shortages and recruitment challenges, we have an underutilised group in our community who want to work, who have experience and have a willingness but are not even able to get to first base.

What good is equality of opportunity if these people can’t even get to the starting gates to have a go?

In Victoria, we are currently in the process of reviewing the Equal Opportunity Act and we hope that the report of that review will be released in the next few weeks. The review arises from the concern that many forms of discrimination are systemic – that is they are embedded in the procedures and protocols of organisations and in the behaviours and values of individuals and it is the form of discrimination that affects a group of people in similar ways. This research confirms that indeed systemic discrimination is evident for many people from culturally and linguistically diverse communities in Victoria. In the Commission’s response to the review, we asked for legislative change that would require us to be proactive in terms of preventing discrimination rather than dealing with it after the fact. This report demonstrates why this is necessary – there are people who are not employed because of systemic responses to their race or their religious beliefs, and that in order to achieve equality, they need some assistance.

One way of looking at this is to say that in order for people to be treated equally they need to be treated differently. How can this apply to people from different racial and religious backgrounds who are seeking employment?

This report makes a number of recommendations to this effect, and it includes the need for more proactive measures to be put in place to help and assist people, and for us to continue with education and awareness rising about the skills and benefits that such people can bring to our workplaces.

Victoria prides itself on being a multicultural community. We should capitalise on this very narrow window of opportunity when labour markets need workers and where the diversity message can be extended into workplaces to give everyone a fair go. This requires government, employers, educators and community to work together to implement the recommendations of this report.

Thank you.