Chairman's Speech

Speech given by Stepan Kerkyasharian

Wednesday 21 June 2005

We are here today talking about Promoting Cultural Harmony. Under that umbrella I want to talk about defending cultural harmony. Why do I want to do that?

It’s because I believe that currently the biggest threats to our community harmony do not come from racists and bigots and white supremacists within our society, although they are still at work, but from the clashes of religious ideologies well outside our shores.

Wherever you look around the planet today there is war or conflict which is almost without exception fuelled by religious difference. I do not necessarily subscribe to the catch cry Clash of Civilisations, but I do believe that power seekers and ambitious politicians around the world have seized on religious difference as a way of fomenting strife.

From that turmoil they apparently feel they can emerge with even more power. We see it on almost every continent. But we don’t see it on our island continent, at least, not yet. However people who belong to all those groups around the world who are today subject to political pressures based on religion, live happily in our community.

What do we have to do then to defend our happy and harmonious society?

How do we firewall our carefully nurtured environment of community harmony against the impact of those events happening abroad, which are feeding such deep hatreds and envies?

Many believe that part of the process of building that firewall is the challenging task of raising our level of knowledge of each other’s religious beliefs.

The Commission has been engaged very deeply in this pursuit for some time and is giving support wherever possible to organisations who are taking important steps towards inter-faith understanding. We do acknowledge that the religious divide in our society is a major challenge.

And, there is no doubt that the popular direction for people working in community affairs or community relations in the past twelve months has been towards inter-faith dialogue. In this state there have been many significant events. Some of these the New South Wales Government and the Community Relations Commission have initiated or strongly supported, others have come from community organisations with an active involvement or sponsorship from the Commission.

For example, you will recall that last year the Premier of New South Wales, the Hon Bob Carr, invited the high profile New York Muslim leader, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf , to come to Australia and talk about the issues confronting Islam in a western setting and the challenges for western society in absorbing large numbers of Muslims from around the world.

He was embraced by the media, because he spoke in a way they found accessible, logical and moderate. We wanted him to talk to those programmes which reached the broader community. For example, he spoke not once but twice on the John Laws programme in quite substantial interviews and they created a warm rapport.

Imam Feisal spoke to many other radio and television programmes, addressed public meetings in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide and in a dramatic statement of inter-faith unity addressed a thousand people, including representatives of every religion represented in New South Wales, alongside the Catholic Arch-Bishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell in St Mary’s Cathedral.

In October last year, the Premier of New South Wales , hosted an Iftar dinner, the ceremonial breaking of the fast during Ramadan, the first to be organised by a government leader in Australia . It was attended by senior clergy of various faiths, including several strands of Islam itself, and along with dozens of lay people of different religious backgrounds sitting together and sharing the same meal.

In the last twelve months there have also been major celebrations of the Hindu festival, Diwali and the Buddhist commemoration of the birth and enlightenment of the Lord Buddha, inside Parliament House itself in Sydney , attended by political leaders and people of many faiths.

These events were big successes in their own way.

However, along the way we may have learnt some lessons about the promotion of effective co-existence of religious diversity within society.

To my mind, some of these lessons have emerged quite naturally from these encounters.

One important lesson is that we need to shift the emphasis. We may be trying too hard to find out how similar the major faiths are. I don’t think that is going to succeed. We must be able to acknowledge that there are substantial differences between the major beliefs and then accept that fact.

There will also be doubt for some about just how those differences can be reconciled, because of the fact that most religions profess to be the one and only path to eternal salvation.

What we need to do now is to accept that our religious beliefs will not converge or merge, that we must respect the right of each other to hold those exclusive disparate beliefs and that we must find out how to live our lives in the commonality of Australian citizenship.

That means ensuring all laws are understood and respected by everyone in the community and are, in fact, embraced by all, because it is our common respect for the laws of the country that gives us our most important point of commonality.

Therefore the way we safeguard our community harmony as a multi-faith society is not to expend our energies searching for common beliefs but to strengthen our unity as fellow Australians, accepting and respecting religious differences.

Once upon a time, Catholics and Protestants were divided in this country because of the history of conflict in other places, but through shared experiences, dare I say mateship, in wars, sporting achievements and economic development, growth and prosperity, we grew into a united nation where religious differences counted for much less, alongside the common identification as Australians.

Now, a whole new set of challenges has emerged as the diversity of our religious beliefs expands exponentially and conflict threatens. People are afraid that we will be thrown off course by different beliefs and customs. You can hear that every day of the week in the simple expressions of fear and confusion from ordinary Australians on talk back radio right across the country.

There is an urgency to seek that commonality of Australianism.

Invariably our religious leaders, who have so positively and courageously entered into inter-faith dialogue must carry this message, with the support of their fellow clergy, into their daily teachings in schools and places of worship.

To demonstrate that need, I refer to two examples in Sydney this year which showed far too clearly how close to the surface those fears and confusions are. In the first example we had a young Muslim Sheik who suggested that if women dressed in a particular way it would make them eligible for rape. Two weeks later a young Muslim high school student insisted the she be allowed to wear a head-to-toe outer tunic, covering her school uniform, because, she said, her religious beliefs required it.

Both incidents precipitated a hale-storm of public outcry and bitter invective towards all Muslims and their religious beliefs and at the so-called spinelessness of government agencies in confronting these challenges. But these two incidents represent a major challenge for all of us as Australians and we need to work out where those issues fit?

But there is yet another important lesson which has emerged from the flurry of inter-faith activity. There seems to have been a focus on dialogue between what is known as Abrahamic Faiths, the religions of the book – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. To me, an emphasis on finding common ground between these three prominent faiths is good. However, in an Australian context, it risks marginalising other major faiths, like Buddhism, the fastest growing religion in Australia, and Hinduism, with all their various strands which are now finding great expression throughout Australia. There are many other faiths followed by Australians that fall outside the Abrahamic tradition. We must not ignore them.

This point only strengthens my argument in favour of seeking our commonality as Australians.

The people of this nation now follow a multiplicity of religious beliefs which may not be able to be reconciled in religious or even theological terms. So we must explore the strength we have as Australians united and learn to maximise that force if we are meet our dream of becoming the great people of the world and an absolute model for the planet. Accept the difference, respect the difference and be united by your commitment to Australia .

That task of fulfilling and maintaining that dream will be in the hands of the children still at school. However they may confront an even more basic issue than that which I have been discussing - the very existence of multiculturalism as public policy. In their world as adults will Governments continue to provide for difference? Will public opinion roll back what people in this room will see as achievements and successes, because they believe multicultural policies are divisive?

What do high school kids think about this question? We are about to find out, as we move on to our final event of the day -the great debate.

The topic is “That provisions for culture, language and religion divide rather than unite our community.”

This is a huge subject. Once you stop to think who’s involved - governments at local, state and federal level, all manner of institutions, places of learning, small business, big business and multi-national business all make provision.

It could be as simple as the right to speak you own language in the street, or even in your own home, or perhaps the right to own or carry a prayer book. There are places where these things could be forbidden and punished.

Or it could be as complex as the right to an interpreter if you are appearing in a court charged with murder and facing life in prison when you cannot understand a word of English, especially the language of the law.

At the moment we do make provision for these requirements. But does this level of provision unite us or devide us?

The team from Baulkham Hills High School is going to try to convince us that provisions for culture, language and religion divide rather than unite our community.

Whilst the team from the Newtown High school of the Performing Arts will argue that those provisions do not divide us.

I have great pleasure now in introducing Mr Lloyd Cameron, State Debating Coordinator, with the Department of Education and Training who will tell us the rules and introduce the teams.

Mr Lloyd Cameron…