Thursday, 9 September 2021

 Ms RICHARDS (Cranbourne) (5995)

These past few weeks have been incredibly distressing for the Afghan-Australian community here in Victoria. In my own community in Cranbourne we have a vibrant and altruistic Afghan community, many of whom arrived as refugees and asylum seekers in only the last decade, escaping the terror of the Taliban, and some of whom are part of a community whose heritage dates back to the cameleers who made Australia home in the 1860s.

The Afghan community is diverse, but they are unified in their response to the traumatic images of horror in their homeland.

In the past weeks I have made many calls and received many more from Afghan community members desperately seeking support for their family and loved ones.

Some of our Afghan community members are living in our Victorian community on temporary protection visas or safe haven visas or as permanent residents, while many have made the journey to citizenship. Of course support for people on these visa types ought fall to the commonwealth government—who have in turn not offered any additional refugee resettlement places nor extended permanent protection to the 4300 people in Australia who escaped Afghanistan on temporary protection visas, who could legally be sent back at any point.

Our Afghan-Australian families deserves better.

And one way the Victorian government can do that is by providing adequate mental health resources to help these families deal with incredibly traumatic experiences.

The work of Foundation House has been an invaluable resource to the wider refugee and asylum seeker community in Victoria over decades. They have supported our diverse community with services for multicultural and multifaith Victorians who have experienced the incredible suffering, fleeing war and violence, and the ensuing trauma of watching loved ones stay stranded in a dangerous situation. Culturally appropriate, trauma-informed and linguistically diverse mental health services are vitally important to the wellbeing of all Victorians—but especially our Afghan diaspora who are struggling immensely without any real support from the federal government.

Minister, I ask: how has the Victorian government filled the gap that is usually the responsibility of the federal government—to provide support for our Afghan diaspora as a community who are overwhelmingly affected?