Monday, 3 July 2000

Media Release

STATE TRANSIT GST ADVERTISING OFFENSIVE

The current NSW State Transit GST advertising campaign has been labelled as offensively tokenistic and completely ineffective by an elected ethnic community leader.

The full-page ad is currently running in ethnic press detailing changes in all State Transit fares due to GST.

"I was offended to see it was completely in English, down to how the calculations were worked out and the fine prints" exclaimed Fairfield Councillor Thang Ngo.

Fairfield is the most multicultural local government area in NSW, where non-English speaking migrants out-number all English speaking residents.

Cr Ngo is the only Vietnamese-speaking Councillor on Fairfield Council.

Cr Ngo argues information about public transport is crucial for non-English speakers, especially those in Fairfield.

"New migrants are socially disadvantaged as they are re-building their lives from scratch – so they rely heavily on public transport and information from the government" said Cr Ngo.

"What a waste of scarce government funds – surely the responsible bureaucrats who signed-off on this campaign have enough common sense to know that you don’t put English ads in ethnic media?"

Cr Ngo will be forwarding the ad which appeared in last Wednesday’s (28/6) Viet Luan Vietnamese newspaper to the Head of the Department of Transport for a "please explain".

"As well, I will be contacting the Chair of the Ethnic Affairs Commission because I understand it is within the Commission’s charter to investigate these issues" said Cr Ngo.

"I intend to send a clear message to the State government and their departments that they can not treat migrants in a tokenistic manner.

Almost one in four NSW residents were born overseas according to the 1996 ABS Census.

ENDS