Laurie Ferguson (Reid, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Urban Development and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

With regard to the allocations in New South Wales of grants for the former Yugoslavia region, one of the failed grants was the Bosnian information service in my electorate. Could the minister please investigate the question of whether there is an unfortunate practice of the department to regard people describing themselves as Bosnians as being the only Bosnians entering in this country? I put it that the former Yugoslavia tends to be a description which Bosnians in particular would be inclined to take up, as opposed to Croatians and Serbians who would be less inclined to describe themselves in that fashion. So limiting the grants to those people who specifically describe themselves as Bosnians is somewhat unfair to those previous service deliverers who have been denied funding this year.

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