2010 NATIONAL MULTICULTURAL MARKETING CONFERENCE

Firstly, I acknowledge the First Australians on whose land we meet … and whose culture we celebrate as one of the oldest continuing cultures in human history.

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.

I am honoured to be here at the National Multicultural Marketing Conference in my capacity as the NSW Minister for Citizenship.

I am sure that all of us here today will agree that Australia is one of the greatest success stories of global migration in modern history. Over the last 65 years, Australian society has undergone one of the most profound transformations ever seen as a result of successive waves of migration from around the globe. In this time we have expanded our population from 7 million to today’s headcount of over 22 million, and growing.

Today one in four Australians was born overseas. Over the decades, the faces and voices of Australia have continued to evolve, and they now reflect the images and sounds of people from almost every part of our planet. We have built on the rich heritage and contributions of our indigenous people, and today, Australia’s incredibly diverse and ever changing mix of people come from more than 200 nations around the globe. We have all contributed to making Australia the phenomenal economic, social and cultural success it is today. The vast majority of people who live in Australia today share a history of migration , either first hand, or as the descendants of migrants. The canvas of modern Australia reflects changing migration policies of successive governments over the years. Our country’s proactive migration program has allowed us to address critical economic issues, such as our growing skills and labour shortages within an increasingly competitive global market place, and it has allowed us to embrace the challenges posed by our growing and ageing population.

As a nation, we continue to meet the challenges of our international obligations and our commitment towards assisting humanitarian entrants, refugees and asylum seekers. Our nation has successfully and harmoniously absorbed millions of people from vastly different countries, creating the kaleidoscope of cultures, languages and religions we see in Australia today. While migrants from the United Kingdom and New Zealand continue to make up our two largest migrant communities, they are closely followed by our growing Chinese and Indian communities. While some of our newer arrivals come from places as diverse and far flung as Eritrea, Uzbekistan, and Suriname ,and we continue to welcome and embrace new communities from across the globe each year. It is Australia’s thriving combination of people, cultures, skills and ideas which will continue to make us a dynamic country into the future. That is why Australia’s global economic and trade links, particularly with our neighbours in the Asia-Pacific region, play a pivotal role. Currently China and Japan are Australia’s two major export destinations, followed by the Republic of Korea, India and the United States of America. Federal and state governments have continued to strengthen our economic ties with the powerhouse nations of China and India and other key trading partners, and this greatly assisted the economy of NSW and Australia more broadly to weather the recent economic storm experienced around the globe. The NSW Government has built a diversified state economy and workforce by attracting investment from overseas.

We have established Industry & Investment NSW as the lead agency to build effective partnerships with key industry sectors, creating linkages with our state's knowledge and skills capacity. It seeks to attract further investment to NSW, supporting innovative and globally competitive industries through our strong technical knowledge and scientific capabilities. Indeed, ladies and gentlemen, NSW has enormous strengths on which to build. We have the most diverse, highly skilled and multilingual services oriented economy in Australia. This comprises approximately one third of Australia’s GDP today.

Our Premier, the Hon Kristina Keneally, recently announced the NSW Business Sector Growth Plan developed by the NSW Innovation Council, in consultation with business, industry and government, a Plan designed to fertilise NSW business and to grow the State’s economy over the next decade. Our goal during the next 10 years is to step onto the global stage, and showcase our innovation, productivity, knowledge intensity and carbon efficiency. The $400 billion NSW economy will continue to drive Australia’s growth, in fact, during the next decade, it is forecast that the NSW economy will grow more than 30 per cent. NSW continues to attract a large portion of new arrivals to Australia, and research has shown that by 2020, the population of NSW will increase by approximately 900,000 extra people – many of these coming from migration. Almost half of these people will participate in the NSW workforce and be active consumers of goods and services across all sectors. As we enter another period of rapid change and growth, it is clear that if organisations are to survive and thrive, they must have a clear purpose and they must adapt their strategies to reflect the new economy and its increasingly diverse participants.

The NSW Government has a clear vision for the decade ahead. We must become more globally connected, highly skilled and ensure that our economy remains flexible enough to respond to changing global trends and to continue to attract new investment opportunities. The NSW Government also recognises that it is not only our economic success that is vital, our social and cultural success, that is, reaching out and engaging with all members of our multicultural society, is equally important. That is why, over the decades, the NSW government has actively supported multiculturalism by promoting diversity as a key strength and an asset. Our business community, our government agencies, and our community sectors, will all continue to benefit from this influx of specialist skills, and the knowledge and experiences drawn from around the globe.

It is also the reason we are all here at today’s conference. Successful marketers in organisations across NSW and Australia understand that cultural diversity creates new business opportunities. More than 5 million Australians are first generation migrants, and many more people represent second and third generations. We must work together to engage everyone in our multicultural society. Organisations must study the market and develop appropriate strategies for this diversity. Successful organisations in NSW and Australia, now and in the future, will be those who tap into the linguistic and cultural skills of their own workforce, targeting customers in their own language, if necessary, offering products which are relevant to cultural, religious and culinary practices of our diverse communities. The explosion of social media in recent years provides an excellent opportunity for all of us, whether we are in the business, government or community sectors, to reach out and engage with members of our diverse multicultural community – particularly the younger generation. Today we also celebrate the fact that NSW leads the world in its approach to public sector multicultural governance, our legislation, policies and models of service delivery across all levels of government, are second to none. This is reflected in the Principles of Multiculturalism that were enshrined in law in the year 2000. The NSW Government through the Community Relations Commission for a Multicultural NSW, is emphasising a new approach to society, a society that is a community of communities, a place where all individuals and organisations should have the opportunity to contribute and participate in public life, and where all people should have equitable access to government services.

We seek to promote community harmony and to facilitate access and equity, and to ensure that public sector agencies make these principles part of their core business. This is achieved through the NSW Multicultural Policies and Services Program, which is overseen by the Community Relations Commission, and is one of the most advanced and sophisticated governance models, within Australia and internationally. It requires all NSW government agencies to plan and deliver programs and services which meet the needs of such a culturally diverse society. The NSW Government also recognises that cultural diversity is a basis for producing, exporting or marketing a product. By targeting a particular language or culture, we are breaking the traditional marketing mould, and in doing so, we are able to reach a wider market within a culturally diverse society. The goal now is to extend this multicultural marketing philosophy beyond the sphere of government agencies, into the mainstream business and community sector. Successful organisations understand that cultural diversity is not just an aspect of corporate social responsibility, it is also good business. For the last 21 years, the NSW Government has been encouraging networking opportunities between all sectors at the Multicultural Marketing Conference to cultivate this approach.

As well as celebrating the best practice examples of multicultural marketing with the annual National Multicultural Marketing Awards. These Awards aim to encourage and reward businesses that focus on the cultural diversity of Australia as part of their marketing strategies. These organisations target customers in multiple languages, providing goods and services which are relevant to the many cultural, religious and culinary practices which characterise Australia in the 21^st century. At today’s conference we welcome the presence of some of the most well known public and private sector organisations who will share with us their challenges and their successes when engaging with people from such diverse backgrounds. Later, during tonight’s awards ceremony , the NSW Government will recognise and reward the efforts of those businesses and organisations who have successfully embraced the benefits of reflecting the cultural diversity of contemporary Australia in their marketing strategies.

Since their inception in 1990 we have seen an incredible cross-section of organisations from the business, government and non commercial sectors take out the annual Grand Multicultural Marketing Award – setting increasingly high standards each year. Last year, the Grand Award was won by the firm Polyglot who are a market leader in providing expertise in human resources and cross-cultural and multilingual solutions to companies who are expanding internationally. Polygot successfully demonstrated to Australia and the world that we are a richer, smarter and more successful country because we have the added strength of cultural diversity. Polygot’s success continues this year with its CEO Corinne Bot winning the NSW Telstra Business Woman of the Year. Another Award category was taken out by Woolworths which devised the clever TV advertisement featuring the husband and wife characters, Maria and Stavros, speaking in Greek. Such a big company as Woolworths had a wider influence on multicultural marketing for other companies. They showed that multicultural marketing is good for business and good for the community. Entries in the 2010 national awards have again demonstrated a range of innovative and successful strategies, providing fantastic examples for other organisations to learn from and adapt for their own use. One of the entries in this year’s awards, Optus, has revised its Prepaid Services by implementing a communications strategy targeting the largest multicultural calling markets from Australia – including India, China, Vietnam and Philippines. They have used culturally appropriate and engaging promotional material developed for the targeted audience, such as the development of a bespoke ethnic SIM Pack. They also ran a multicultural campaign tailored to encourage international mobile call messaging to these countries.

The campaign was highly successful and demonstrates the commitment of Optus Prepaid Services towards their multicultural customers. Within the Commonwealth Bank Commercial Small Business Award category we can see the excellent work being undertaken by the firm called ‘44 Gallons’. This company developed an Internship Program which assisted people from overseas who have graduated from an Australian University by placing them into relevant work positions in the Australian workplace. Having local experience is often the key to getting a job. 44 Gallons attracted suitable applicants via their communication strategy using online promotions and social networking activity, together with more traditional printed material. The internship program linked culturally diverse applicants with a host company, this offered a win-win combination to the host firms and students. Also in this category we see the trail blazing work of Sanford Legal … a small legal firm from the western suburbs of Sydney. The company used the language skills of their staff to target different consumer markets in their preferred language, and they advertised in the local newspaper to enhance brand awareness within the community. Sanford Legal also undertook community sponsorships to extend awareness of the services provided by their firm, and they conducted a social media marketing strategy through Facebook which allowed them to connect with the online community and attract new clients. In the health arena, we can learn from the innovative and successful partnership between LOUD Multicultural and Arthritis Australia. This partnership resulted in a national multicultural marketing campaign to raise awareness of the prevalence of arthritis in multicultural communities, and to advise them of the available resources and treatment options. The campaign targeted older Chinese, Italian, Greek, Vietnamese and Arabic Australians. All information was delivered in the five languages in a culturally appropriate format, as well as providing access to bilingual health professionals. Under the government category, we can see the excellent results being delivered by The Pathways to Primary Industry Project , initiated by Centrelink, in partnership with a number of Western Sydney community and government agencies.

The Pathways project provides training and employment experience in the agricultural industry for refugees from farming backgrounds. As part of the project, Centrelink officers liaised with migrant and refugee networks and key agencies to identify rural industries in Western Sydney who were willing to offer work experience to suitable applicants. TAFE NSW also played a critical role by designing a new agricultural course for refugees which both improved their English language skills while students learnt about Australian farming practices. Under the Commercial Big Business Award we can see the innovative work of Western Union. Western Union identified an opportunity to support the inaugural Indian Film Festival in 2010 and took out exclusive sponsorship of the short film category. This campaign marked Western Union’s launch into the new territory of multicultural creative arts, resonating strongly with the target community. As we can all see from these examples, there are some truly fantastic multicultural marketing strategies occurring within our business community , and also throughout the government and community sectors. In closing, I would like to say that I am proud of the many achievements of NSW Government agencies, as well as organisations from within the business and community sectors, who have embraced multiculturalism so wholeheartedly over the past two decades. Multiculturalism requires intelligent and collaborative responses from across government and the wider community, to ensure that we reach out to all segments of our society. In particular, I would like to say a very special thank you to everyone here at the conference today, to all of your dedicated staff and volunteers who devote their time to devising and delivering such innovative multicultural marketing strategies. Today we celebrate the success of these strategies and we take away valuable lessons for our own organisations to learn from and adapt.

Let’s continue to work together to demonstrate to the broader community that the future success of all organisations in Australia, be they part of the business, government or community sectors, lies in our ability to reach out to, and engage with, the widest and most diverse audience possible.