Post by Mark Bodley

Are we at risk of backsliding into the 70s? I wasn't born in Melbourne. In fact I was born, to an American mother and Australian father, in Townsville. I claimed for years that an overabundance during my first two years of life in Townsville led to a hatred of bananas. Growing up in Adelaide (and a healthy dose of late-teen angst) I fell in love with the gritty, big city, 'niche to fit everyone' composition Melbourne offered. I was a wide-eyed kid; alive to the variety of culture on display. Pay what you feel Buddhist kitchens, punk rock, fine art you could BUY, not just look at, sport, sport and more sport, and an oppressive state government. Over the 30+ years I've lived here I've come to revel in the particular way Melbourne does multiculturalism. It isn't a melting pot of homogeny. It isn't a segregation of clans. It isn't 'us' and 'them'. While it isn't perfect it is an amazing salad of different cultures living side-by-side, sharing space and intersecting in generous, caring ways. I've sat in meeting rooms of 20-ish people with more than 90% of the participants being from a non-Aussie background. Working together. Sharing perspectives. Aspiring to co-create the best outcome, for all, that they could. This to me is incredibly precious and a thing that recent 'alpha male' and 'traditional values' seem hell-bent on destroying. Please don't let that happen. We don't elevate ourselves by standing on the backs of others. Harsh Upreti, Bhupinder Uppal, Christine Villanueva Tedeschi, Hannah MacLeod, Trevor Churchley, Harold Lord, Dante O., Suleiman Elmi