Hello and welcome to Walk the Talk. I am Shekhar Gupta at the Australian High Commission in New Delhi and my guest this week a very distinguished Australian and believe it or not, he is not even a sportsman or a cricketer. Peter Varghese, the new High Commissioner of Australia to India. Welcome to Walk the Talk

PV: Thank you

SG: And good day to choose when you have this exhibition on sort of pictures exhibiting your multiculturalism

PV: That’s a wonderful coincidence actually because there is a great way of demonstrating that contemporary Australia has a very multicultural society and the question of who is an Australian would involve an answer that will just bring in every part of the world

SG: Maybe take a whole foolscap sheet

PV: Yes, absolutely

SG: But you know you don’t need an exhibition because you are a very good example of that. Parents born in Kerala, you born in Kenya, brought up in Australia. You are a wonderful example of multiculturalism

PV: That’s true. And my experience is not at all unusual for contemporary Australia that we have people from all over the world. You know something like 40 per cent of Australians have either born themselves overseas or one of their parents have been born overseas. So even though we are a small country in population terms, I think, the multicultural story in Australia is quite an exciting one when you look at the way, really in the space of a generation, not longer than that, we have developed into what is a very pluralist, multicultural but distinctively Australian community

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