National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia
Issues
Difficulty in speaking English, inability to understand languages other than English, and failure to communicate across cultural barriers isolate and impoverish the individual, cause friction and injustice in society, and contribute to economic inefficiency and waste. As a result Australians are disadvantaged.
While most Australians speak English, a large number do not understand or speak it very well if at all. Many more cannot read and write English. About two million Australians over the age of five speak a language other than English at home. Some 370,000 are unable to speak English well or at all and about 9%. of this group - including a number of Aboriginal Australians were born here.
The practical implications are enormous:
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in the Australian economy and the workplace, people who are unable to speak English will remain functionally unskilled no matter how impressive the qualifications that they possess. it means lower productivity, poorer morale, less flexible use of labour, industrial malfunctions, increased health and safety hazards, obstacles to retraining and multi-skilling, and less effective use of overseas acquired skills;
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recent estimates suggest that poor English language skills could be costing Australia at least $3.2 billion each year in additional communication time needed in the workplace;
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for the individual employee it increases the likelihood and duration of being unemployed or confined to a low-skilled, low-paid or marginal occupation, thereby reinforcing patterns of social inequality;
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in the classroom, it is a barrier to acceptance, to learning and ultimately to social participation and to future economic security; and
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for certain individuals it is an awesome and devastating barrier - for the young immigrant whose education is irreparably disrupted, for the older woman unable to re-enter the workforce, for the low-skilled or retrenched worker unable to retrain, and for the aged retiree now lonely and isolated.
While English is a problem for many Australians, as a nation we are also disadvantaged by our general lack of facility in other languages. Almost 90% of the adult population speaks only English. Less than 20% of school children study a language other than English and, until recent Government initiatives, the proportion studying languages in senior secondary and tertiary education had been in long-term decline.
On the other hand, Australia is fortunate to have a vast but largely underutilised natural reservoir of language skills. Over two million Australians including immigrants and Aboriginals - speak a language other than English at home.
As indicated by Figure 6.3, Italian, Greek, Chinese, German and Arabic are the most common, and more than one in four of their speakers are Australian-born - and many of them, as with their immigrant parents, are bilingual.
Yet the preservation and development of this capital investment in language is often dependent on the family home and afterhours ethnic schools.
The potential national benefits of this natural resource are little understood:
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intellectually, culturally and attitudinally it has the potential to make Australia a richer and more tolerant society;
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economically it can facilitate our interaction with the rest of the world seven of our ten largest export markets and indeed eight of our ten fastest growing markets are non-English speaking countries. An increasing proportion of our rapidly growing foreign tourist trade comes from similar countries.
Associated with the language question is the issue of how Australians of different cultural backgrounds relate with one another. Failure to communicate effectively across cultures has many implications:
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in everyday discourse and interaction it can cause individual frustration and anger;
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at a different level it can result in government programs failing to reach their intended clientele; in professionals finding themselves unable to respond effectively to the needs of their clients; in a narrow and stereotyped portrayal of certain ethnic groups in the media; in unproductive tensions in the neighbourhood, workplace and classroom; and ultimately in lost opportunities in our international trade and tourism markets;
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at its worst, cultural misunderstanding manifests itself in prejudice, group vilification and, as recently evidenced, even threatened or actual violence.
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