Message from Mr Joseph Assaf AM
Now in their 23rd year, The Ethnic Business Awards continue to recognise and celebrate some wonderful contributions made to our business and cultural landscape. They do this by rewarding outstanding achievers for their innovation, hard work, and superlative standards in the arenas of both small and large business, here in Australia.
These Awards are made without any consideration of race, colour, religion, language, or cultural background. Yes, even English speakers are included: their accents may be Canadian, American, South African, Irish – whatever: no-one is excluded, not even the English themselves!
The Awards now also include the already highly successful and much acclaimed category for Indigenous Australians in Business – a category introduced last year to complete the Ethnic Business Awards picture - a vast, multi-hued, richly-textured landscape, vibrant in its diversity, bright with hope, and inexhaustible both with and through the products, ideas, and interactions it generates.
An example of such interaction is embodied in the Awards themselves as, each year, they continue to attract hundreds of nominations (over seven hundred this year) and also the continuing interest and support of many businesses and organisations through sponsorship. Not least among those sponsors has been my founding partner: the National Australia Bank, which has been a constant and generous companion throughout the journey.
We have passed many milestones.
At twenty-three, we are already past the recognised ‘age of majority’ but, still, we continue to walk this road with a spring in our step and our eyes on a widening and splendid horizon. We are still ready to look for new opportunities to celebrate these compelling stories of resilience, ingenuity and enterprise – stories like the ones you will hear tonight – and we are certain that those stories will continue to come in – as both migrants and Indigenous Australians continue to make their remarkable contributions to Australia’s business, cultural, and social landscape.
I wish them all well as I welcome you here, tonight, to celebrate their marvellous achievements.
