President of the Food For Thought Network Varvara Ioannou invited three keynote speakers to present their inspiring stories at the Network’s annual International Women's Day luncheon:
-Dr Jackie Huggins AM, National Congress of Australia's first Peoples' Chairwoman, consultant, celebrated historian and author
-Alana Johnson, farmer, Victorian Women's Trust convenor and Australian Women in Agriculture founding member and
-Evelyn Tadros barrister, lecturer, Human Rights Arts and Film Festival founder and chairwoman.
The SBS Greek Program was there and had a chat with them.
Jackie Huggins
"Ι think the power of storytelling is phenomenal once we break the stereotypes and the fear that are bouncing off each culture. Get down to meeting people! Having conversations, learning about politics, learning about each other … that, for me is the true essence of reconciliation.
Learn your history, the history of this country, which is thousands and thousands of years old… and why you came here, and I would say to everybody, ‘we welcome you’.
We welcome migrants to this country because it would have been a very boring country if we just had the Brits and us (laughs).
It’s a corny kind of way, but it is a way, which we should be given. They deserve the respect that has not been there for decades. We are coming together in many ways… sometimes we have to really look at the unpalatable of our history but also look at the way that our politics and the politicians work in this country to keep all of us at bay.
The message from here was loud and clear; we should do it from our level, don’t rely on politicians, don’t rely on anybody else but there are certain ways that we are able to bring up a just cause for all of us."
Alana Johnson
"Out there in rural Australia, not only do we have a lot of women who are members of generational farm families - sometimes up to five generations- we have Aboriginal women who have been involved in agriculture in this country for many thousands of years.
We have also women from all over the world, many migrant women, working on family farms where bringing their cultural tradition to this country, often meant that those women even though they have worked, have not been acknowledged; they have no rights and no power no ability to even own land.
Traditionally across the world, you’d have to say that women’s place in farm and agriculture has been dismissed.
I think a couple of interesting things are happening. One is that young women are thankfully being given enormous opportunities now. We know that for example, in agriculture and veterinary science courses across Australia, more than half of the participants studying this year are women. But, on the other hand, doing just that is not enough.
There are many women out there, who are disadvantaged, who don’t have opportunities; and really if women don’t take some time to want to make a difference to other women’s lives - not only to their own –[ nothing will change]… That’s what we are calling them to do".
Evelyn Tadros
"About ten years ago, I founded the Human Rights arts and Film Festival which is an annual festival that travels all around Australia. The main aim of the Festival is to broaden our awareness of human rights through popular media such as film, art, music, speakers and everything else.
We’ve had more than 80,000 people attend the festival over the past ten years. While many might assume that the people we speak to are converted, half of these people have consistently said that they don’t ordinarily attend any human rights events.
The HRFF is really important, especially now. I feel that we are living in an unprecedented age of fear. We have many leaders using fear to divide us by our race, by our religion, by our colour, by our nationality.
Many Australians will be surprised to learn that Australia is actually the only Western democratic country without any type of human rights legislation. So, we have the Victorian Charter in Victoria, but on a federal level, we actually don’t have that. And what this means, is that the government can make laws which do violate human rights. A very good example of that is the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees and the fact that the governments are able to legally put someone in detention indefinitely and any other international human rights instrument will actually be illegal.
And I feel that what we need to do as the community is actually really getting behind human rights. We have various forces in the community trying to undermine our institutions and our faith in human rights and we really need to come together and realise that we all are entitled to human rights."
