Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to talk about Mitchell shire's family fiesta celebrating Cultural Diversity Week, which happened on the weekend. This is something that is vitally important in a growing area like McEwen, where we have many races and nationalities moving into developing areas, where people come together to be part of the community. By bringing people together we have actually taken the opportunity to create stronger communities, and this will work for the long-term benefit of all the people of McEwen.

This is something that has been very seriously lacking over the years—having a cultural diversity week and having the shire involved to create these events, making sure that when people move into these new areas they can build that social cohesion. Many people from different backgrounds who move in usually find that there are not a lot of people from their own language background and family there, and this makes them very isolated. So this gives people an opportunity to come together to meet their neighbours, have an exciting time and actually enjoy each other's company.

So I congratulate Mitchell Shire Council for taking this initiative. I know it has been a while since this has been done but this is something that is very important, and I hope that it continues for many years to come because the need to strengthen our community is so great when you have such a great growing and developing area like McEwen.