Australia Day: Being visible in diversity

Here is part of my Australia Day speech which I delivered at Shellharbour City Council's Citizen of the Year Awards ceremony last week where I touch on the importance of being visible when it comes to diversity.

It’s wonderful to be here as the Australia Day Ambassador for Shellharbour City Council and back home in the Illawarra.

And I too would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of Dharawal Country and recognise their continued connection to the land we meet on today

For those of you that don’t know, I’m a local.

I was born at Port Kembla Hospital.

Grew up in Warrawong.

Went to school in Wollongong.

Have relatives right here in Shellharbour.

And although I now live in Sydney, I visit extremely regularly.

I’m so attached to the area, that I still call the Stockland Shopping Centre next door Shellharbour Square, and the suburb just next to us Balarang instead of Oak Flats.

It really is an honour to be here tonight celebrating the achievements and all your contributions to make this city, really special.

Yes, Shellharbour is beautiful, with easy access to the mountains and the sea, but ultimately, it’s the people that make communities.

It’s truly inspiring to hear about what you're doing to make Shellharbour an even better place to live and it’s great that we can acknowledge that too.

The other thing I love about Shellharbour, about Wollongong, about Redfern where I live, and Australia as a whole, is the diversity of its people.

It’s something I always touch on as an Australia Day Ambassador every year... the fact that we live in a melting pot of people from different nationalities, backgrounds, lifestyles and experiences and that we do so harmoniously allowing us to enriching our lives.

Part of my Australian story is about embracing my Portuguese heritage.

My family migrated from the Portuguese island of Madeira.

While I was born in Australia, Portuguese was my first language, however for some reason at school, people started calling me Richard instead of Ricardo.

That name stuck with me more for more than 20 years.

Knowing that I wanted to work in television news, I think I subconsciously kept that name at the beginning of my career because I didn’t have any ethnic role models or people that looked like me on television.

So throughout my career at WIN News, Nine News and Sky News, I was Richard Goncalves, pronounced Gone-calves.

It wasn’t until I started as a journalist at SBS, where I had the opportunity to revert to my birth name Ricardo Gon?alves, along with the way my family pronounces our surname.

That's because I felt like I started working in a place that celebrated and encouraged diversity and inclusion... and where some people looked like me.

It also meant, and continues to mean, I can be my authentic self, ultimately making for a happier and more genuine work environment.

There's also a business case to because a happier environment makes for a more productive environment.

I've recently doubled down and even include the cedilla in my surname on air and on my social media accounts, in a visible sign of diversity.

Of course, things are now changing, but it’s a nice reminder for those of us that can in whatever aspect of life, to be visible so that others that feel a little different, can also live and contribute to communities like Shellharbour to their maximum potential.

It's often said you can’t be what you can’t see, but while it many not be 100 per cent true, it does help.

So however you mark Australia Day, I urge you to pause and reflect and respect our past, but also celebrate who we are as a nation... and how diversity can make our future even richer and more fulfilling.