Mayor's Speech - Human Rights Diversity Forum Awards

E nga mana, e nga reo, e nga iwi - tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou, katoa

Your Excellency; Commissioner de Bres; Commissioner du Plessis; distinguished guests. Good evening and welcome to this awards ceremony and celebration of the fifth anniversary of the NZ Diversity Action Programme.

A particularly warm welcome to visitors to Wellington. I hope you've enjoyed your time here and will return to your communities refreshed and ready for the challenges ahead.

The past few days have been quite a big event in the field of diversity.
This is my fourth speech since Saturday on the subject of diversity and if any of you have heard any of the previous ones, I apologise for any repetition.

Apart from that danger, and the challenge this has given me to come up with something fresh to say, I take this as a very good sign.

I'm very happy to have attended two cultural festivals this weekend, and to be making my second address to a diversity forum gathering.

I welcome this as evidence that in our communities we are working hard to create the diverse, equal and harmonious society envisaged by the NZ
Diversity Action Programme.

We have a long way to go, of course. And we cannot forget the shameful desecration of Wellington's Jewish cemeteries which led to the creation of this programme.

Despite the anger and momentum for change those attacks generated in the community, we would be foolish to believe the hate behind the desecration had dissipated in five years.

And where anti-Semitism persists, said the former US Senator Paul Sarbanes, the wellbeing of all our people is at risk.

But I believe we have taken great strides toward becoming a far more inclusive, tolerant society. There is a view that societies can grow out of racism as people's understanding of each other develops.

Shirley Chisholm, who in 1972, when Barack Obama was still a little boy in short trousers, was the first black woman to seek nomination to the US Presidency, said this: "Prejudice against blacks is becoming unacceptable, although it will take years to eliminate it. But it is doomed because, slowly, white America is beginning to admit it exists."

In the same speech to Congress she went on: "I have been far oftener discriminated against because I am a woman than because I am black."

Of course, our dedication to diversity, equality and harmony must not stop with matters of race. Any discrimination on whatever grounds - race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability - holds societies back and prevents them performing at their best.

Tolerant minds are open, creative minds, able to enjoy and absorb many Influences and use them to fuel their own growth and progress.

Wellington City Council tries to encourage such minds as a matter of policy. Members of 85 different ethnic groups call Wellington home and we would be going backward if we failed to foster a love of diversity.

I'm delighted that we are going to hear Rayhan Langdana's winning Race Unity speech. If these principles have taken root in the young they will organically spread throughout society over the years - to all our benefit.

I'd like offer congratulations in advance to all the award winners this evening. I hope everyone who has taken part in the events of the past few days has found them stimulating and helpful.

Thanks to events like this and people like you, I hope and believe Wellington will not be known as the place where cemeteries were vandalised, but as the cradle of a movement which is doing so much to move us toward that diverse equal and harmonious future.

Thank you.

The speech delivered may vary from this text.

Department Details:
Mayor's Office