News and Events

2007 Media Releases

Cultural Diversity and Social Harmony - Conference spotlight on Goulburn Valley

Many of Australia’s most experienced specialists in issues facing emerging communities in regional Australia will reveal their insights at a regional conference in Shepparton on September 26-27.

The conference - Cultural Diversity and Social Harmony: the Goulburn Valley Experience - will focus on the health and well-being of emerging communities in regional Australia, drawing on the experience of Goulburn Valley migrant and refugee settlements.
Hosted by La Trobe University, Shepparton, with the Shepparton Inter-Faith Network, and the Ethnic Council of Shepparton and District, the conference will consider the issues and challenges facing migrants and refugees, their host communities, and their service providers.
Educationists, policy-makers, cross-cultural practitioners, an international theologian, academics and other specialist researchers will identify the success factors and challenges involved - as signposts to help other emerging communities in regional Australia.

Conference spokesperson Dr. Mary Jo Fortuna said the diversity of nationalities, cultures and migration factors contributing to emerging communities in the Goulburn Valley suggest the region is well placed to identify success factors in regional migrant settlement.

“This region appears to have been reasonably successful in receiving and accommodating a large number of migrants of many different ethnic origins over a long period of time,” Dr Fortuna said.

“The different groups and subsequent emerging communities represent not only the diversity of nationality, culture and circumstance leading to migration.  The diversity of migration experiences - whether migration was individual or structured, voluntary or non-voluntary - results in variables that can be observed, in the different migrant groups and in the receiving community.”

Speakers will include Professor Des Cahill, Professor of Intercultural Studies at RMIT University, one of Australia’s leading researchers in immigrant and multicultural studies.  He will deliver the first keynote address Quality Community Leadership in Multicultural and Interfaith Australia. Professor Cahill will examine local and ethnic community leadership in a more globalised and multi-faith Australia.

Sue Casey, Health Sector Manager at the Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture at Foundation House, will deliver the second keynote address Refugee settlement in regional Victoria: What are the factors that lead to successful sustainable settlement?Ms Casey is responsible for rural and regional service development at Foundation House; she is also helping to establish the Victorian Refugee Health Network.She is experienced in social policy and direct service delivery, and has worked in senior social policy roles in State and Local governments.

Dr Michele Grossman, Associate Director of Postgraduate Research at Victoria University, Melbourne, and Associate Professor Santina Bertoine, former Director of the Workplace Studies Centre, Victoria University, will speak on Interrupted lives: challenges for providers of tertiary education and training for refugees - the GOTAFE Experience, reporting the findings of their 2006 research identifying the barriers refugees face in accessing tertiary education and training in Victoria - based on six case studies at Higher Education and TAFE institutions, including GOTAFE in Shepparton.

Robyn Sampson, a researcher at La Trobe University’s Refugee Health Research Centre, will speak on Producing a multicultural society in regional Victoria: the role of Iraqi settlement and implications for future policy. Ms Sampson researched Iraqi refugee settlement in the City of Greater Shepparton and District. She will explain how multiculturalism informed the provision of services to Iraqi refugees when it was a central concept in Australian social policy, and the implications of the Federal’s Government’s new emphasis on “citizenship”.

Educationist and consultant Margaret Piper’s field of expertise is training and capacity building in refugee re-settlement. She will speak on Regional Settlement: What is Needed to Make it Work, based on research for the Department of Immigration in late 2006 on key lessons learned from the Shepparton Pilot Settlement Program. (Service providers and community worked together with three levels of government on this pilot to settle 10 Congolese families. The program was so successful it is now used to inform similar initiatives elsewhere in regional Australia.)

Uganda-born academic Dr Apollo Nsubuga-Kyobe, who lectures in management and organisational behaviour at La Trobe University’s Shepparton campus, will speak on Capacity Building of the African-Australian Communities in the Goulburn Valley, focusing on the links between skills and employment opportunities. Dr Nsubuga-Kyobe has contributed to several major Government-funded and non-Government reports on settlement services for African communities. He is currently working with a multi-disciplinary team at La Trobe’s Shepparton campus on a research project focused on regional migration.

Kirsten Paisley, Director of the Shepparton Art Gallery, will describe the commonalities that span the cultural backgrounds of more than 40 Afghan and Australian women involved in the Afghani Embroidery project Sewing All the Way to Here, on exhibition at the Gallery throughout the conference.

Dr Frank Purcell, a PhD candidate at La Trobe with a doctorate in theology, will speak on Religion and Social Cohesion in Australian Society. Dr Purcell lectures in Australian Politics and History at La Trobe, Shepparton.

Conference Venue: Eastbank Centre, Shepparton.
Date: September 26-27.
Program and registration

MEDIA INQUIRIES AND ABSTRACTS:

Elaine Plant, La Trobe University, Shepparton T: (03) 58218795 or 0409 958 535 Email: e.plant@latrobe.edu.au