‘What Happens Next?’: A More Welcoming Country?

Dr Susan Carland: Welcome to another episode of What Happens Next?. I'm Dr Susan Carland.

In this episode, we'll hear from experts at the coalface of making immigration and diversity work in Australia. How are they taking action to help increase diversity and inclusion in our society, and why does it benefit us all?

Bel Schenk: Hi, my name is Bel Schenk. I'm the Victorian Coordinator of Welcoming Cities. We work with local governments around Australia to make them more inclusive and welcoming.

Dr Susan Carland: Bel Schenk, welcome. You work for an organisation called Welcoming Cities. What makes a city a welcoming city?

Bel Schenk: It is a hard question to answer because a lot of what makes it welcoming isn't something that you would see. Talking about like a bit of an iceberg approach, where it might look very welcoming on the surface, but underneath is where the work's done.

We work in policy. We work with local governments trying to change their policy and try to influence change in their policy. Something that you could see might be signs in different languages, for example. Books in different languages in local libraries, for example. Also, accessible and inclusive places and spaces.

Dr Susan Carland: What's an accessible or inclusive space?

Bel Schenk: An example of that might be your local swimming pool, which might be run by your local council. Do they have signs in different languages, for example? Do they have spaces where women feel safe to go swimming? For example, do they shut the swimming pool down for an hour a week even, so women...

Dr Susan Carland: Right. For women's-only sessions.

Bel Schenk: Yeah, exactly. So women can feel very safe to go there and not have to worry about what they're dressing in, how they feel and that sort of stuff. Do facilities have prayer spaces for people to use, for example?

A lot of people, you might not think about that. Maybe the average person on the street doesn't really think about that if they don't need to use those spaces, but there are a lot of people that do want those things and should be able to have them.

Dr Susan Carland: If we're looking at it as an iceberg, you told me about the things that you'd see, but that, as you said, is just the top of the iceberg, the above-the-water. What are the less tangible things that are existing below the water that make for a welcoming city?

Bel Schenk: So that's when the policy comes into it. And we don't really know about a certain city's multicultural action plan, for example. We don't really get to see that as much as we might like to, or a planning application that has multiculturalism at its heart, for example. That's sort of the work that's done underneath.

We talk about policy and how policy can influence what we see all the time. A planning application might have information about accessibility for multicultural communities, but that's not going to be… we're not going to make a big song and dance about that and talk about it in the media, for example. It's just going to happen and it's just going to be the norm, and that's what we hope to be in the future.

Dr Susan Carland: So Bendigo recently became Australia's first accredited, welcoming city. What did they have to do to get the big stamp from you guys?

Bel Schenk: Yeah. I wanted to acknowledge that it's quite a brave thing to be the first city in Australia to be accredited towards the Welcoming City Standard.

What they did was gave us all of their policies, all of their projects, they gave us so much information. And we worked with Monash University, actually, to accredit them. It's basically an audit where we'll sit down and look at policies, plans, talk to the community, which is really important because you can have all the policy – you can have the under-the-iceberg stuff – but you've got to have the over-the-iceberg stuff.

We go out and talk to community members and say, “How do you feel? What groups are you involved in? Do you find them welcoming? Do you find them inclusive? Have you experienced racism? And if you have what happened, how was that? How was that responded to?” So things like that.

Dr Susan Carland: And is Bendigo a pretty multicultural city?

Bel Schenk: It is, and it's becoming much more so. It was quite interesting. I mean, I won't claim to be an expert on Bendigo, but in the Gold Rush it was incredibly multicultural because a lot of people went to Bendigo to find wealth. But then after the Gold Rush, it became less so. But now it's building up again.

Dr Susan Carland: And why do you think Bendigo decided to put up their hand and say, “We want to go for this?”

Bel Schenk: Well, I think... I mean, four or five years ago, maybe even longer, they had a few problems, well, quite a few problems, with the building of the community centre that had the mosque as part of it.

Dr Susan Carland: Tell us about that for people that might not be familiar with that story.

Bel Schenk: Yeah. There were people that were very against this. There were very right-wing extremist people that thought that this is not welcome in the Bendigo community.

Dr Susan Carland: Building a mosque in Bendigo.

Bel Schenk: Building a mosque in Bendigo, or building a community centre of which the mosque was a part of. They didn't want it in the centre. There were protests in the streets, for example. People didn't feel like it was a friendly place to be part of.

The council got involved, which is really a good thing to see because there is a lot of leadership that can happen in council, and a lot of information can be imparted to community members through council, through newsletters and things like that.

So the riots – it was a small percentage, but it was a loud percentage. I think that's the problem with a lot of very, very loud – I want to say men, but I'll say people – very loud people who want to make their views known, who think that they own a community, which they obviously don't, and wanted to make it very clear that other people were not welcome to really practise their religion or to practise their culture.

Obviously it's not a view that most people that would be listening to this podcast would agree with, but I think they did want to influence policy and influence culture, and get people on board to make sure that this mosque didn't get built. It didn't work. I mean, the mosque still hasn’t been built so there was a bit of a lag in it, but I think Bendigo did suffer a bit of reputational damage because of that.

And I'm not saying that Welcoming Cities Accreditation is going to fix that like clicking a finger, but they have worked so hard with their policy and they have become so much more welcoming in that time, and they'll continue to do so.

Dr Susan Carland: So a city or town gets this accreditation. What's the benefit from then? For the community, for people who might want to visit, what do they get?

Bel Schenk: They get to know that there's a council that is trying, and always trying to be better.

From a council point of view, they get to know what they're doing well, but also what they need to improve on and what they can improve on with time and with resources and things like that. I guess they get a bit of a pat on the back to know that they’ve been one of the first to go through the accreditation and know where they sit.

You can’t really say, “I’m a welcoming city” and not have something to back that up, so we’ve looked at their policies and we’ve said, “This is actually a really good way of doing the planning permits”, for example, or “this is a really good way of… your Aboriginal Action Plan, for example, is excellent because it has First Nations at the heart of everything that you do. It really acknowledges that there were people that lived here before us and they have so much that – there’s so much that can be learned from them.”

Marie Segrave: Hi, I'm Marie Segrave. I'm a researcher at Monash with the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre and the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre.

Dr Susan Carland: Marie Segrave, welcome. What can the person who's listening at home who wants to help increase a more diverse society or encourage a more open attitude towards migration in Australia, what can they do?

Marie Segrave: Well, as someone with small children, I think one of the small things you can do is encourage the celebration of all the various celebrations of different communities and different cultures within our community. I think it's amazing to understand that people celebrate different things and to learn about those celebrations and traditions because traditions, generally, are wonderful ways to learn about difference and just to realise that actually there's so much value in that. So that's really, in a way, a small kind of example, and –

Dr Susan Carland: It means there's a party all year!

Marie Seagrave: Yeah, it does, and lollies and all of those sorts of things. So what does it matter what the celebration is? But I think when all of those things are part of the everyday that now it's this celebration and it's not – “In my family, we wouldn't celebrate that, but at school we recognise what this is and we learn about that.”

There's much to be gained from that, and I think that's true also in thinking about Indigenous cultures and understanding the need both to recognise harm, and the challenges, and the important recognition of our history in the same way we need to understand other histories that are marked by violence and various forms of power and its impact, but also to recognise that we need to celebrate things.

And that knowing bits and pieces of different languages, and learning about different cultures means from a young age, people recognise that we're all just who we are and we bring that together. I think that's really critical.

Bel Schenk: I think the average person doesn't really think about social cohesion. When they wake up, they don't kind of go, “I want my world to be more socially cohesive and welcoming.” It's just something that you feel.

So some examples of social cohesion in action... I'll talk about the Knox Toy Library. The City of Knox, a Welcoming City member, they have a toy library. And a couple of years ago, they realised that all the toys were very white.

The dolls had white skin, the books they had in the library had very white characters. Puzzles, for example, white. And a lot of people that were accessing the toy library were from a certain demographic, so, white people, and it didn't reflect the society that lives in the City of Knox. They worked with us to, very, very simply, buy more toys that reflected the community. Toys that had different colour skin. Well, not skin, because they're toys –

Dr Susan Carland: Different plastic.

Bel Schenk: And then they translated some of their collateral into different languages, which encouraged older people to take their grandchildren to the toy library and really interact with other people that were using the toy library. It was a really beautiful thing that shows the community that you are welcoming and inclusive, but it doesn't kind of... it's not boring in the way that it's written in policy. It just – it's fact. We can use this toy library. We're invited to use this toy library and here is a doll that looks exactly like me and I'm going to use it.

Rebecca Wickes: Hi, I'm Rebecca Wickes. I'm the director of the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre at Monash University.

Dr Susan Carland: What actions do you think individuals can take if they want to improve their connection to and acceptance of diversity in Australia?

Rebecca Wickes: You know, it’s interesting. When we moved to Melbourne, my husband, he decided to retire early, and he didn't really have a lot to do when he came down here. We were living in a rental place, and so he wasn't able to do any kind of renovation.

He was really like, “What am I going to do?” And I said, “Why don't you take a course to teach English, and why don't you go and work with recent migrants and help them to learn English?”

And so he did that, and he loves it. And he meets with a man named... well, I probably shouldn't say the name. He meets with a lovely older gentleman from China who can read really well but can't speak very well, and they meet once a week. And during COVID, they just call and have a chat, and this gentleman's coming over and having lunch with Pete next week, and they have formed this really lovely friendship.

And that is the simplest thing that someone can do, is to just find a way to give a small amount of themselves to someone else, and open up an entirely new world, and learn a skill about how you communicate something new and distinct to a recent arrival in Australia. It really doesn't cost much. In fact, it costs nothing other than a small amount of time.

So I would highly recommend that people who – to look around at your community and say, “Is my community really homogenous? Are we all sort of the same?” And if the answer is yes, then just to take baby steps, because it is scary. You don't want to just plunk someone in the middle of Fitzroy and say, “Hey, go at it,” when they've lived in a predominantly Anglo-Saxon community. It's scary for people when they don't understand new circumstances and situations, so a baby step. And that could be through a church activity. It could be through joining a community group. It can be through working at a community hub, lots of things that people can do.

I just re-read this beautiful article that was written by one of my absolute all-time favourite urban sociologists, Elijah Anderson. And he wrote a book, and then I re-read an article that came from that, which was called The Cosmopolitan Canopy. And it was about the kinds of spaces that exist in particular communities where all walks of life can be. These spaces are these wonderful places where people can just go and watch diversity. They don't have to partake if they don't want to. They don't have to speak to other people if they don't want to, but they can watch it all unfold in this kind of safe way, and it might be through eating or consuming products, but you can visualise it.

And I think about the Victoria Market, or I think about South Melbourne Markets, or even the Dandenong Markets where you can just see such rich diversity and different walks of life, and you can just be a voyeur. And that can be our first step towards understanding.

But the other thing that Elijah Anderson was talking about with these spaces is that these areas are safe in as much as you can go up to someone who's different, and you can ask questions about what sort of really interesting ramen are they eating? Or what's that fantastic Ethiopian dish that you're serving, and why would you eat that, and why do you use the spongy bread as opposed to a fork? Where sort of questions that may be banal and mundane can be asked in a safe way.

And that allows people an opportunity to learn about a culture without being afraid of saying something wrong or doing something wrong, making a faux pas, offending someone, and people will go there because they know that that's a place where that can happen.

And so I was thinking about that even in my own work, about what are our cosmopolitan canopies? Where are our places in the city where we can encourage newcomers to visit, and to go, and to experience different aspects of life? And to break down a little bit of that anxiety so that they are ready to understand other people's experiences and lives, and take that on board? And hopefully change some of the more punitive attitudes that some members of our society hold.

Bel Schenk: Be very open to understanding that people live differently to the way you might live, and be very open to learning about that.

One of the other things I think people don't think about too much is that... never underestimate the power of asking for something. We work with local councils. They listen. And I don't think people would understand that councils actually listen. So if people ring up or write to the open line and say, “Hey, this park needs more accessibility. I don't feel safe. I don't feel welcome. What can you do?”, that's going to be listened to. I think councils need to listen to that sort of stuff and really act on that.

Other things to do include... yeah, think about your own migrant journey. Most of us have a migrant story, whether it's our parents or grandparents or those before us. Think about what they went through when they came to Australia and how they might have felt, and how you could sort of re-create how they felt and think about what they went through and how others might be feeling in comparison to them.

Say hi to people in the street. Celebrate your neighbours. Celebrate differences as well.

Dr Susan Carland: I have a great multicultural story with my own neighbours. I'm Muslim, which means we don't drink at all, and my husband got a very expensive bottle of alcohol sent to him as a present, which I gave to my neighbours. Because I said, “We don't drink. Would you like this?” And they said yes, and I thought, “Isn't this great multicultural engagement?” [Laughter]

Bel Schenk: I got some bread on my doorstep just yesterday, actually.

Dr Susan Carland: Oh, there you go.

Bel Schenk: Yeah. So I feel like neighbours, it's where it happens. And that spreads out over periods of time. So you meet your neighbours, and then maybe the neighbours meet their neighbours, and everybody becomes friends.

Dr Susan Carland: We just give each other the food that we can't eat.

Bel Schenk: Exactly.

Dr Susan Carland: Bel Schenk, thank you so much.

Bel Schenk: Thank you.

Dr Susan Carland: That is it for this episode and for this topic. We will be back next time with a brand-new conundrum to unpack. Thanks to all our guests today, and it was great to hear about all the things that they are doing to make Australia better. I’ll catch you next time on What Happens Next?.