Speeches

Multicultural Marketing is Smart Marketing

Having opened this conference for the past 11 years, I can say that this occasion is special in that I am welcoming delegates who, for the first time are attending this conference. I welcome and commend you for taking this positive step in learning and sharing your ideas on multicultural marketing.  I am also of course very pleased to welcome back delegates who regularly attend this conference.  Your quest to continuously harness your expertise strengthens the pillar of multiculturalism and makes Australia a truly lucky country.

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Challenging Islamophobia: towards social justice and inclusion

The theme of this conference brings to surface the constant need to reinforce social cohesion, to promote harmony, and address isolation and marginalisation in our communities.

In recent years, both in Australia and globally, there have emerged a number of threats to social cohesion. In particular, Muslims are at risk of feeling threats to their inclusion and the term Islamophobia has increasingly found resonance in the last decade or so. It is easy to identify some of the reasons why the world feels so fractured, but more difficult to offer solutions.

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Address by Dr Stepan Kerkyasharian AM, Australia Day Ambassador at the 2009 Australia Day Celebration held in Yass

Everyone of us has a role to play. Everyone of us is an ambassador for Australia, in our homes with our family, in our neighbourhoods and communities, in our towns and cities.

Address to the Yass Australia Day Celebrations 2009

Address to the FECCA Congress in Hobart

In my view what is needed is an amendment to the Constitution of Australia. A simple clause to the following effect:- All Australians no matter of what ethnic, religious, race or cultural affiliation are equal before the law and are guaranteed the presumption of innocence until found guilty by a court of law.

Address to the FECCA Congress

Address at the inaugural Passover Interfaith Dinner

"Tonight I feel the spirit of unity of purpose; the irrepressible desire to live together in peace and harmony. What we all feel here tonight is that the sheer weight of goodwill reflected by this event and many others before should be bottled and dispersed throughout the community.

Address to the inaugural Passover Interfaith Dinner

2004 Symposium

"It has been just over six months since the last Community Relations Symposium and I am pleased to see a mix of both familiar and new faces amongst the crowd."

Address to the 2004 CRC Symposium

Cardinal George Pell

"It is my pleasant duty to welcome you all to this interfaith gathering at St Mary's Cathedral. You are all welcome: Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and Hindus, those of uncertain faith and perhaps a few without faith. We are here to pray for continuing peace and mutual tolerance, especially in our own land of Australia."

Address of Cardinal George Pell, Catholic Archbishop of Sydney

Crime Prevention Through Social Support

"The Commission is doing a lot of work with Police on how Police are seen in the community. This affects the ability of Police to best respond to and prevent criminal behaviour. These areas include building a culturally diverse Police Service, looking at prejudice-related crimes, using interpreters and developing community relations."

Crime prevention through social support

Ethnicity and Crime under the Microscope

"We need to be cautious about linking ethnicity and crime in the one breath. Knowing little about it has not prevented certain groups from drawing conclusions at both ends of the spectrum. While some groups deny the social interplay between crime and ethnic background, others have gone to the extreme of blaming ethnicity for criminal behaviour. Neither view does justice to the reality that crime is a community problem and that the community needs to come up with sensitive and creative ways of addressing it."

Ethnicity and crime under the microsope

Launch of How to Live Together by Charles Rojzman

"When I look through this book and see the headings and sub-headings it reads like a hand-book for a chair of an ethnic affairs commission or perhaps more appropriately for a chair of a community relations commission, which we expect to be later this year. I say this because there is a lot which is immediately familiar to me."

How to Live Together launch

Imam Feisal

"We are here both as individuals and as representatives of our religious traditions. We must take advantage of this unusual breadth, a breadth not only of religion and geographical views of each other, but also of social vantage points. We have experienced the reality that there is a multiplicity of religious voices in the world, and have come to affirm, importantly, that common religious, moral and policy grounds can be found in an exchange among these voices."

Address by visiting US Muslim leader, Imam Feisal

Multiculturalism in Australia

"I emphasise here the fact that we are multicultural, and will remain so whether we want it or not and whether some like it or not and whether we use the M word or not."

Multiculturalism in Australia

Sydney University Graduation Ceremony

"I know that each of you graduates feel a sense of pride and gratification for your achievements which are being recognised today. In my case it is an honorary degree which recognises my lifes activities which as some of you may know, in the last 30 odd years, has been dedicated to the promotion of mutual understanding among people of different races and religions."

Sydney University Graduation Ceremony

The Journalist and Islam Conference

"Media and consequently journalists have a key role to play in effecting a positive response and outcome to the questions I posed. At the very least, the Australian media must report on, must reflect on the reality of Islam within our society as the faith of a large number of fellow Australians. It cannot continue to ignore the positive aspects of a major section of our society."

The journalist and Islam

Welcome to the Real World

"For many people, migrants in particular, the police will be the first contact they will have with our legal system. Police are also the first point of contact in many trying situations, like a car crash, the death of a relative, a missing child and so on. In tense and highly emotional situations like these, it is essential for the police to be aware of other peoples real worlds".

Welcome to the Real World