Skip to content

Media

National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia

Achievements

The Government has done much to implement its commitment to a fair and just society. Since April 1983, some 1,400,000 more Australians have found jobs and been able to participate more fully in Australian society - a major achievement in advancing social justice and removing individuals and families from poverty. As a result of this growth in the labour market, unemployment declined from 10.2% in April 1983 to 6.1% in April 1989.

Major advances have been made through the provision of government programs and payments, ensuring better access to essential community services as well as assisting both low income wage and salary earners and those outside the workforce. Such measures have included:

  • the introduction of Medicare - a universal and fairer health insurance system;

  • increased assistance for housing, including increased public housing funding and the introduction of the First Home Owners' Scheme;

  • repair of the social security safety net by increasing assistance for those in most need and ensuring that assistance is better targeted. This included:

-   major increases in assistance for social security recipients with children and the introduction of the tax-free Family Allowance Supplement in 1987 to assist low-income working families;
-   increased assistance to pensioners, beneficiaries and low income working families renting privately, including substantial increases being provided over the course of 1989-90;
-   an increase in the single pension rate from 22.7% of average weekly earnings in March 1983 to 24.7% in December 1988; and
-   the easing of social security income tests to address 'poverty traps' and encourage recipients to supplement payments through part-time work;

  • the introduction of the Child Support Scheme to ensure that non-custodial parents meet their responsibilities to support their children;

  • the creation of some 68,000 additional child care places, with an additional 30,000 places to be provided by 1992-93, a 200% increase since 1983-84;

  • the introduction of the Home and Community Care Program to assist elderly and disabled people to remain in their homes including specific assistance to elderly people from non-English speaking backgrounds;

  • a $40 million package of support for Australia's increasing aged population born in non-English speaking countries announced in November 1986 including funds for nursing home and hostel accommodation and for pilot community-based projects;

  • the development of the National Agenda for Women, the Government's blueprint for raising the status of Australian women - including Aboriginal and immigrant women - by the year 2000, launched in February 1988;

  • the extension of occupational superannuation coverage across the workforce; and

  • major reform of the tax system to provide greater equity and efficiency through broadening the tax base, taxing capital gains, effectively pursuing avoidance and evasion and reducing marginal tax rates.

In terms of making its own services more accessible and equitably available to all members of the community, the Commonwealth's principal initiative in the multicultural context has been its Access and Equity Strategy, adopted in 1985.

Commonwealth agencies are required to make their programs and services responsive to the needs of a culturally and linguistically diverse community. Departments and authorities are obliged to prepare Access and Equity Plans which not only identify barriers to access but also indicate measures to remove them (e.g. improved administrative arrangements, staff development, establishment of consultative mechanisms and the provision of information in community languages).

The plans must also specify performance indicators for evaluating the effectiveness of these measures (e.g. through the collection of data on client characteristics, such as country of birth).

A critical element in this approach has been to encourage agencies to express Access and Equity objectives in their corporate goals so that they become an essential part of management's overall corporate planning.

In this way Access and Equity goals are embedded in the Commonwealth's broader program management and budgeting reforms. Until now the Access and Equity Strategy has been restricted to the overseas born, with a particular focus on women.

Seven portfolios, including the key human services agencies, have already published their Access and Equity plans and the remainder are nearing publication.

Previous: National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia - social justice