Thursday, 29 August 2024

 Ben CARROLL (Niddrie – Minister for Education, Minister for Medical Research) (14:10): Wear It Purple Day strives to foster supportive, safe, empowering and inclusive environments for LGBTIQ+ people right around our great state. This is particularly important to me as the Minister for Education. Tomorrow our schools will be encouraged to participate in Wear It Purple Day. On this side of the chamber we are very proud of our Respectful Relationships initiative as well as our Safe Schools initiative. Our nation and our state are at their best when we embrace and celebrate diversity and strengths. It is who we are and who we love that matter most. Wear It Purple Day across the Education State will be a very important initiative tomorrow. We will never back down from supporting our rainbow community. We are Victorians first.

I want to put on the record that I stand with the Minister for Equality in the other place in expressing my displeasure with the federal government for not including questions on gender identity and sexual orientation in the census in 2026. The federal government must not diminish and ignore hundreds of thousands of people from this community. We are proud to stand with the LGBTIQ+ community. Australian democracy depends on the census. We know on this side of the chamber that better data leads to better policy outcomes, and we are calling on the Commonwealth government to stick to their platform and stick with their promise and make sure the census delivers for all Victorians, particularly with those health interventions, those dedicated services and the dedicated funding to every part and every corner of our great state. Data from the ABS itself shows that people from the LGBTIQ+ community suffer double the rates of poor mental health compared to the heterosexual community. That is why we are getting on with the job to make sure the Commonwealth does everything in its power to make sure that every Victorian and every Australian is represented in the 2026 census and that they count.