Thursday, 20 March 2025

Ministers statements: Pride events

Vicki WARD (Eltham – Minister for Emergency Services, Minister for Natural Disaster Recovery, Minister for Equality) (14:14): Pride includes fabulous events like Victoria’s Pride street party, which draws over 50,000 people into the heart of Melbourne. It includes vibrant, diverse communities around the state. Just have a look at our bursting regional Pride events calendar. The annual Midsumma regional activation program has successfully held 14 rural and regional events showcasing these extraordinary talents, stories and communities.

This program also contributes significantly to the visitor and economic activity of our regions. There is Gippsland Pride day this weekend, Gaytimes in the member for Monbulk’s electorate, Bendigo Pride in your electorate next weekend, Speaker, and then you have got Castlemaine Pride later this year. There are the Geelong Pride festival, which I am sure the member for Geelong is looking forward to, Out in the Open Festival in Shepparton and Drag’d Out Beechworth in Benambra, and the list goes on.

Over Labour Day weekend the members for Macedon and Wendouree, federal colleagues and I joined the Victorian commissioner for LGBTIQA+ communities Joe Ball and his beautiful family at the annual ChillOut Festival parade in Daylesford. We saw an enormous amount of joy, creativity, celebration and inclusion, with floats from local schools, the CFA, Scouts and more. Artists and performers I spoke to, some of whom had travelled from Melbourne, told me how frequently they are booked for performances in regional Victoria, highlighting just how wonderfully inclusive we are and the economic benefit that comes from this inclusion across our state.

Disappointingly, yesterday some members of this Parliament tried to weaponise Victoria’s rainbow community by demonising a simple and inclusive rainbow libraries toolkit for librarians. We have also seen some in this place vote against our anti-vilification bill, and sadly some did not even turn up to vote at all on this important bill. Nevertheless, the Allan Labor government will continue the work to ensure everyone in this state is safe, equal and respected.