It was a pleasure to address the Australia Press Council (APC) media conference on  multiculturalism in the Australian media. This important event was organised jointly by Professor David Weisbrot, Chair, APC and by the leaders of Chinese community. Other speakers included The Hon. Helen Sham-Ho and Dr Geoffrey Lee Member for Parramatta and Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs. The function was held at the Marigold Restaurant, in Chinatown.

For more information see the online report in Chinese language from Sing Tao newspaper: ?http://admin.wechat.com/s?biz=MzA3NDM1MDIwMw==&mid=209677490&idx=5&sn=158bb5abd348dca0f2c14a68a21a7d81&scene=5#rd

and from Sydney Today newspaper

http://www.sydneytoday.com/content/746144?mobile=true

President of Australian Council for Human Rights Education: You Will Win

On 15-17 July I convened ‘The Advancing Community Cohesion – Towards a National Compact Conference’ (ACCC) at University of Western Sydney (UWS) Parramatta Campus.

For the ACCC program see: Conference booklet

ACCC was a resounding success.   The Governor General opened the Conference on 15 July.  The following two days of the conference comprised of 19 sessions with 79 speakers, including Prof.  Peter Shergold AC, Chancellor of UWS, Senator The Hon. Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Social Services, The Hon Michael Kirby AC CMG, Retired Justice of the High Court of Australia, H.E. Dr Hassan El-Laithy, Ambassador of the Arab Republic of Egypt, Dr Tim Soutphommasane, Race Discrimination Commissioner, Tim Wilson, Human Rights Commissioner,  numerous  senior government officials,  scholars from throughout Australia and community representatives, including those from FECCA and Muslim groups.  Indeed, the 350 ACCC participants included all key actors who are at the forefront of community cohesion advancement in the country.

There was an impressive array of media mentions, including ABC TV and current affairs, SKY News, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Some of the highlights are listed below.

• Front page SMH and Age- you can read the story online (PDFs of the print edition in media report)
• ABC PM, Thursday and Friday
• SBS TV
• Radio National interview with Dr Sev Ozdowski
• Rolling television coverage on APAC, SKY News’ live current affairs station
• Social media discussions included retweets of conference content by Tim Wilson and Michael   Ebeid

See photos from conference here

 

After the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos in Santiago de Chile withdrew as the host of 6th International Human Rights Education Conference (IHREC) in December 2015 I wrote to the international human rights education network to seek a new host. I received a number of proposals including from Burma, Canada, Gambia, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Uganda, UK and others, but the most viable proposal was received from the University College Roosevelt, Utrecht University in Middelburg, Netherlands in cooperation with the Human Rights Education Associates (HREA).

Today I am pleased to announce that the 6th International Human Rights Education Conference will be held at the University College Roosevelt (Utrecht University) in Middelburg, the Netherlands, from 16- 18 December 2015.  Professor Barbara Oomen is the Conference Convenor, together with Frank Elbers of HREA. A Conference Call will be circulated shortly. Prof. Oomen can be contacted at:  B.Oomen@ucr.nl ; and Frank Elbers at: frank.elbers@hrea.org

The University of Western Sydney, HREA and the Australian Council for Human Rights Education agreed to partner with University College Roosevelt in support of the 6th IHREC.  The conference website and a call for papers will be developed shortly and circulated to the human rights education community.

I am also pleased to announce that the 7th International Human Rights Education Conference in 2016 will be hosted by the Human Rights Centre, Faculty of Law (Centro de Derechos Humanos, Facultad de Derecho) at the University of Chile. Dr Claudia Cárdenas, Director of the Human Rights Centre will be the convenor of the 2016 conference.

Finally, Equitas has agreed to host the 8th International Human Rights Education Conference in 2017 in Montreal, Canada, possibly in partnership with one of four Montreal Universities to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

Equitas is a Montreal-based NGO set up in 1967 with a mission to promote human rights education in Canada and around the world.  Equitas programs in Canada for children and youth reach approximately 100,000 young people/year.  Globally, Equitas has been running annual International Human Rights Training Program since 1980 and has been delivering programs to reinforce the HRE capacity of civil society and government organizations in Africa, Asia, the Americas, the Former Soviet Union and the Middle East since the mid- Nineties.  Equitas is recognized by many as a leader in the field when it comes to human rights education methodologies and evaluation. See  www.equitas.org  for more details.

For more information about Equitas please contact Ian Hamilton, Directeur Général / Executive Director Equitas – Centre international d’éducation aux droits humains / International Centre for Human Rights Education or visit:  www.equitas.org

See conference’ s Web site at  http://www.ihrec2015.org/

It was a pleasure to present this submission on behalf of the Australian Multicultural Council in response to the Productivity Commission’s invitation to submit responses to their Inquiry on Migrant Intake into Australia.

The Council strongly supports the continuation of the Government’s current managed migration programme which not only maintains Australia’s economic prosperity, but also supports our social cohesion.

For full submission please see:  http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/current/migrant-intake/submissions

I was deeply sorry to learn of the death of Joan Kirner, a friend and former premier of Victoria. Joan was a wonderful, imaginative and inspirational women, strategic in her approach and committed to social justice. I also loved her humour and ability to work hard.

I had the pleasure of working closely with her on the Centenary of Federation Advisory Committee back in 1993-94 and to accompany her on consultations from Hobart to Broome; in fact we produced a great report that resulted in creation of Melbourne Federation Square, train line from Alice Springs to Darwin and many other projects.  Enclosed are few photographs of the Committee and its Secretariat under the leadership of Gavin Fry, its Secretary.

After our work was completed Joan invited me to her home in Williamstown to meet her husband Ron and we continued to stay in touch.  Last time she e-mailed me few weeks ago to congratulate on my appointment to the Australian Multicultural Council and to say that I was “one of my favourite public servants”.

She and her spirit of generosity will be sorely missed.  Vale Joan Kirner!

Professor Wladyslaw Bartoszewski died in Warsaw on Friday 24 April 2015. He was 93. He was one of the great heroes both during and after the Second World War leading the fight against Nazi and Communist tyranny and then contributing the rebuilding of democratic Poland, including as a Polish Foreign Affairs Minister.

He was born on 19 February 1922, into a Roman Catholic family living in a Jewish neighbourhood in Warsaw and took up journalism. He took part in the defence of the city from Nazi forces in 1939. After Nazis took the city, Mr. Bartoszewski was among several thousand Poles rounded up. He became one of the first prisoners at the new Auschwitz concentration camp, bearing number 4427, but was released after less than a year because of pressure by the Red Cross.

He joined the underground Home Army’s fight against the Germans, in its Information and Propaganda Bureau under the pseudonym Teofil, the name of a character in a favourite novel, and fought during the Warsaw Uprising. He was most noted for his wartime work with the Council for Aid to Jews, code named Zegota, which saved tens of thousands of people from Nazi capture and assisted the ghetto uprising. It was for this work that Israel named him Righteous Among the Nations, a honour given to non-Jews for saving Jews during the Holocaust.

After the war, when Poland fell under Soviet domination, he returned to journalism and joined the Polish People’s Party, at the time the only opposition to Communist rule. He was accused of being a spy and spent nearly 10 years in Communist prisons before his release in 1954 on grounds of poor health. A year later, the government informed him that it had determined that he had been wrongly sentenced.

He remained a thorn in the government’s side. Because of his writings and opposition activities, he was forbidden to publish in Poland for four years beginning in 1970.

In 1980 he became an early member of the Solidarity trade union, which spearheaded the movement to overthrow Poland’s Communist government, and was briefly imprisoned again.

After the collapse of Communism, he was Poland’s ambassador to Austria in the early 1990s and foreign minister under two presidents, Lech Walesa in 1995 and Aleksander Kwasniewski in 2000 and 2001. During this period he was credited with playing a key role in a post-war diplomatic triumph: the forging of a close relationship between Poland and Germany.

At a 90th-birthday celebration at Warsaw’s Royal Castle, Mr. Bartoszewski was presented with a medallion by President Bronislaw Komorowski inscribed, “To the one who dared to be disobedient.”

In 1993 Prof. Bartoszewski visited to Australia at the invitation of the Australian Institute of Polish Affairs and I as president of the ACT Branch of the Institute and my wife Hanna have had a pleasure of hosting him at our Canberra home and to accompany him to many meetings at Parliament House. The interview he gave during the visit for SBS radio is available at:

http://www.sbs.com.au/podcasts/yourlanguage/polish/episode/407891/Prof.-W-.-Bartoszewski

Professor Wladyslaw Bartoszewski meeting  leaders of the Polish community in ACT at Dr Sev and Hanna Ozdowski residence in Canberra in 1993.

Warm invitation to all to join me at the next University of Western Sydney open Forum be held on Wednesday 3 June at Parramatta South campus in Building EA, Room EA.G.19. Refreshments will be served at 5:30pm with the forum starting at 6:00pm.

Our guest speaker on the night is Michael Ebeid, CEO and Managing Director of SBS, who has 25 years’ experience in senior roles across the technology, telecommunication and media industries.

To register, please visit http://www.uws.edu.au/equity_diversity/rsvp

A biography of the speaker and more information on the Open Fora series are available at http://www.uws.edu.au/open_fora

I look forward to seeing you on the night.

I am pleased to have been asked to organise the ‘Advancing Community Cohesion’ Conference. It will be held at The University of Western Sydney Parramatta Campus from 15 July to 17 July 2015 with support of  the Australian Government Department of Social Services, SBS, Department of Immigration, Australian Multicultural Foundation, Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils, the Scanlon Foundation and many others.    This Conference will examine international best practice for dealing with national and local issues regarding social cohesion. It will explore philosophical questions and more pragmatic aspects of community cohesion in diverse societies. The Conference will also examine the key national initiatives in place to advance community cohesion within Australia and will search for new direction.

The Conference will bring together leading decision-makers, thinkers and practitioners in multicultural affairs to discuss and debate key issues and national initiatives in place to advance community cohesion within Australia and search for new directions.  By attending this Conference, participants will be able to: 

• engage and network with key leaders, decision makers, thinkers and practitioners in  

             multicultural affairs;

• establish relationships with key players in this field, including Australian and international

  experts on  social cohesion;

• discuss and debate national and local issues regarding social cohesion, including exploring its philosophical and pragmatic aspects in diverse societies; and

• gain knowledge on possible successes and initiatives aimed at addressing difficulties and  

           challenges in advancing social cohesion.

More than a quarter of all Australians were born overseas, and a further 20 per cent have at least one parent who was born overseas. This is nearly half of the Australian population, reflecting a rich diversity with over 260 languages spoken and more than 270 ancestries identified.  I invite all interested in community cohesion – students and academics alike, as well as members of our diverse civic community, to share your views and to gain insights from their fellow participants.  I look forward to your contribution to the ‘Advancing Community Cohesion’ Conference deliberations and being part of important network that aims to shape Australia’s future. 

See attached conference docs

ACC2015 – Conference Flyer    ACC2015 – Sponsorship Opportunities