Thursday, 20 February 2025

Multicultural institutions

Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (12:10): (815) My question is to the Minister for Multicultural Affairs. The Premier’s media release dated 17 December 2024 titled ‘Strong action to fight hate and help Victoria heal’ states that there will be:

… work to update Victoria’s multicultural policies, institutions and personnel …

Minister, given the dire state of Victoria’s budget, I am particularly concerned about the inclusion of updating institutions. Will you guarantee as part of your updating of institutions there will be no budget cuts to the Victorian Multicultural Commission or reduction in funding to the Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria?

Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (12:11): I thank Mr Mulholland for his question. Of course social cohesion and community safety in Victoria are a top priority for the Allan Labor government and a top priority of mine as Minister for Multicultural Affairs. We live in one of the most culturally diverse places in the world, but there is no question that we have seen our social cohesion come under significant pressure as a result of events a long way away from here but events that all the same have had a really distressing and devastating impact on many in the community, including our Jewish community and including our Palestinian community and the broader Muslim community.

Late last year the Premier, alongside me and the police minister, announced a number of important measures to address our social cohesion here in Victoria, including within the multicultural affairs portfolio, commissioning highly respected former VMC commissioner George Lekakis to undertake a review, a three-month review, into a number of our multicultural policies, institutions and settings. This is very important, because I think in Victoria we can all agree that we are very good at celebrating our cultural diversity in many different ways, including our festivals and events, including through the many interactions that all of us as members of Parliament have with our multicultural communities, but we do also need to look at how we can resolve conflict amongst community members and different communities in times like those we have had most recently.

The VMC, the Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria and indeed many other community organisations that do incredibly important work with our diverse communities, many of them newly arrived communities, are really important institutions in Victoria. I am not going to pre-empt what Mr Lekakis’s final report will say, but this is not about singling out individual organisations, this is about providing broad recommendations to the government about how we can actually strengthen those institutions and strengthen our social cohesion here in Victoria. Mr Lekakis’s work will be supported by a reference group that will be made up of highly respected Victorians, and I look forward to receiving his report in due course.

Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (12:14): I guess that was no guarantee about budget cuts, but I will ask my supplementary. Minister, Labor have been in government for 10 years; why haven’t Victoria’s multicultural policies, institutions and personnel been kept up to date?

Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (12:15): I thank the member for that supplementary question. Mr Mulholland likes to add a little commentary between his supplementary and substantive and loves to verbal people in this place, so I completely reject the characterisation of this important review and the politicisation by those opposite when it comes to multicultural affairs in our state. They continue to play a divisive role. They continue to divide and spend their time looking for little wedges in the community. I must say, Mr Mulholland, as your first question to me as multicultural affairs minister as the shadow, it says everything about you.