Australia Day

[saffronlie]

I do not feel much like celebrating today. I have gained a new perspective on my country since moving to Sydney just under twelve months ago

Comments

[ozfille]

Actually I work with quite a few Aboriginal people but then I work in the Public Service and so I don't know the percentage of places in private industry that are filled by Aboriginal people. The Public Service tends to be a bit different - for years it was the safest place for gays and women to work in that at least there were formal rules about discrimination in HR policies in the Public Service long before there were overall anti-discrimination legislation enacted that covered all forms of employment

[saffronlie]

Thanks, it's good to hear perspectives beyond my fairly homogenous peer group at university. I completely understand a regional bias against the big cities. The Beattie and Bligh governments in Queensland have made only the most token of efforts to acknowledge the rest of the state that isn't south-east Queensland. The majority of a state's population may live in the city but that doesn't mean they need all the money that the government wants to throw at it. The recent decision to abolish coin tolls in Brisbane is a great example. Anyone from out-of-town who wants to drive in Brisbane is going to have to get their own e-toll account at inconvenient expense. There are ways to at least pay lip service to regional concerns without making it obvious that they couldn't care less. Of course, that's just an old Queensland rant coming out.

And while Henry Lawson may have hated Sydney, you do get Kenneth Slessor & co. writing poems about the beauty of William Street etc.

[ozfille]

William Street must have looked a lot better in Kenneth Slessor's day, the current version is rather drab and depressing.

[saffronlie]

I think it was much the same in his day, but he still managed to find it lovely: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/william-street/ Probably a glass-half-full kinda guy.

[ozfille]

I forgot to add that the NSW Young Australian of the Year for 2010 is Jack Manning Bancroft an indigenous person who at 24 is the CEO of the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME), and has been named in Sydney’s Top 100 Most Influential People. In 2005, as a 19 year old univeristy student, Jack founded the AIME program and began it with 20 Indigenous kids in Redfern. AIME incorporated in 2008 and Jack became a CEO at age 22. In 2009 there are 40 schools, five universities, 500 Indigenous high school students and over 500 university volunteers across NSW participating in AIME.

Here is a link to his profile -
http://www.usyd.edu.au/alumni/images/content/activities/magazine/2007-spring/profile.pdf

[saffronlie]

Thanks for that info. What a fantastic idea and what an interesting situation he is in.