Wednesday, 27 August 2025

Community safety

Sarah CONNOLLY (Laverton) (19:15): (1287) My adjournment is for the Attorney-General, and the action I seek is that the Attorney-General update me on our government’s implementation of anti-vilification reforms, which we rightly strengthened earlier this year, with the new laws set to come online next month. As Victoria prepares for some really nasty far right wing protests this weekend, our response to hate speech and vilification in our community has never, ever been more important.

When I spoke on these reforms I recounted some of the racist vilification that I was seeing on my social media pages directed towards folks in my local community. Of course it is not just me who has experienced this. I am sure we all remember when the Premier recently put up a video with someone – a Muslim woman, I think it was – who just received the keys to a brand new social home. Through no fault of their own, the video sparked a ferocious backlash of racism and Islamophobia. The woman was demonised and typecast by anonymous Twitter accounts as a recently arrived immigrant, which in all likelihood was not the case.

I hoped that following the federal election this kind of commentary would die down. Concerningly, it has gotten worse, and we are seeing more racism, Islamophobia and vilification in our local communities than ever before. These days if I make a post with a photo that includes folks in my very diverse community in Melbourne’s west, with large Indian and Asian communities, dozens, if not hundreds, of comments are posted. They usually emerge asking me why there are not any white people in the photo or accusing us of participating in some kind of ‘great replacement’– whatever that is – or nastier, more disgusting commentary on communities in our part of Melbourne that did not ask for this kind of hatred to be directed towards to them.

With innocuous posts I have made, like a graphic celebrating Pakistan Independence Day or a subsequent post of me with other members in this place celebrating India Independence Day, we are bombarded with hundreds, if not thousands, of comments spewing the vilest, most racist nonsense. This racism is mostly directed towards our Indian community in Melbourne’s west. There is absolutely nothing like it in blatancy or vitriol. It is not masked by concerns about crime like we see with our African communities, nor are they easily stereotyped, with comments talking about lazy dole bludgers who come here for benefits. These are appalling, appalling, appalling comments. This is not the community response that I expect to see to these kinds of wonderful pictures celebrating the amazing people in Melbourne’s west, which is why my community and I would welcome an update from the Attorney on how these new reforms will work to stamp out hate speech and vilification of our multicultural communities here in Victoria.