Thursday, 17 October 2024

Ministers statements: multicultural communities

Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (12:38): I rise to update the house on the work that the Allan Labor government is doing to support and celebrate our multicultural and multifaith communities right across the state. We are home to one of the most diverse and multicultural societies in the world. Our diversity is one of our greatest strengths, and it is something we are all very proud of, I know. We have seen recently this diversity on full display. On Sunday I had the pleasure of attending Dussehra festival at the largest Hindu temple in the Southern Hemisphere, Sri Durga in Deanside, together with a number of my colleagues from the other place, and it was an absolute pleasure to see so many young families from our Hindu and Indian communities in Melbourne’s west celebrate this festival and the triumph of good over evil. I am very proud that we are continuing to support Sri Durga with a $400,000 grant for their new car park, and I look forward to seeing that completed this year.

Of course this week I was also honoured to join the Premier, Mr Tarlamis, a number of members from the other place and hundreds from our Eastern Orthodox Christian communities to welcome His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople at Government House. To see so many of our Eastern Orthodox Christian communities gathered to celebrate Christian traditions and values and to hear from His All Holiness was truly wonderful to see.

We are proudly standing up for our multicultural communities, with three grant rounds currently open, including supporting our multicultural media organisations, infrastructure upgrades for our Chinese community and another round of our popular festival and events program so that our communities can celebrate and share their culture. Our government will always stand with our proud and diverse communities.