Wednesday, 12 August 2026

 Matthew GUY (Bulleen) (12:07): I am glad to see some people are excited to hear my next 30 ‍minutes. I am excited too to give it to you. I am sure you will enjoy it.

Members interjecting.

Matthew GUY: I am being interjected against by my own side. I rise to speak on the Multicultural Victoria Amendment Bill 2026. I do so as a former minister for multicultural affairs and someone who is a very strong supporter of multicultural policy and multiculturalism as a way of life for us here in in Victoria. I was multicultural affairs minister following on from Nick Kotsiras, who was a fabulous minister and is a great bloke. He was the member for Bulleen before me, a great trailblazer for Greek Australians. He really was, having been elected to this Parliament and serving here for many years, becoming minister for multicultural affairs and energy at one stage. But I took inspiration from another famous, well-known Australian of Greek heritage from my side of politics, Petro Georgiou. When Petro Georgiou worked in the Fraser government, he was instrumental in the establishment of the SBS. The SBS was a product of the Fraser government and a very proud one from this side of the chamber to see how SBS began and what it certainly represented when it did begin. It was the forerunner to many other radio stations – apart from when it was originally Channel 0/28 and you had to dial it in in Melbourne and Sydney, and then it became Channel 0 and then obviously rebranded to SBS through the mid 1980s. That was a product of the Fraser government. I took a lot of inspiration from Petro Georgiou. I remember catching up with Petro a number of times before his passing and having conversations about multicultural policy, about the inspirations behind it and about what the Fraser government had done to get SBS off the ground.

It was not always easy, and it was not always, from either side of the political spectrum, supported. But certainly back in the 1970s the Fraser government believed in this style of media contact with many Australians as the country changed from what had traditionally been, post British settlement, a migratory pattern which was obviously predominantly from the British Isles. It was clearly changing post war, with migration not just from continental Europe but also coming in at that stage from, to a limited extent, South Asia but certainly East Asia. The country was certainly changing, and it needed a media outlet to match. That was part of the federal commitment around recognising where multiculturalism was going and where the country was going in terms of multicultural policy, and I thought it was important to mention it at the start of this discussion, when we are looking at multiculturalism and the Multicultural Victoria Amendment Bill, given that I think SBS has had such a profound impact on multicultural policy to date.

Victoria and indeed Australia obviously, and we would all say this, no doubt, in these speeches, is a product of multiculturalism, whether it is from the Indigenous Australians, who have been here for tens of thousands of years, and then the migratory patterns that have happened in this state. But it is easy to forget how multicultural our country was even 150 years ago – and I know people do not often remember this – not just in Victoria but certainly the country. We were a place where one in six people was ethnically Chinese during the gold rush, and it was like that for many years. Indeed if you go through Ararat in central Victoria today you will see that history, which is very strong, and it is hundreds of years old. A fellow I knew quite well, again, before his passing, was a Melbourne city councillor called Wellington Lee. He used to run a pharmacy just down on the corner of, I think it would be, Exhibition and Little Collins. He was a Melbourne city councillor – quite a character – for many, many years, and his family had been in Australia for many, many decades. They were ethnically Chinese and came out in the gold rush. I think they were in Bendigo, from memory, and then obviously had settled through Melbourne, as part of that rich product of multiculturalism that has been in this country for a very, very many years.

I think I have said in this chamber before that the Ghan railway train, which runs nowadays from Adelaide to Darwin but was originally from Adelaide to Alice Springs, was named after the Afghans. Well, it was named after the people who built the overland telegraph and, at the time, most of the Anglo-Australians did not know who these people were who were praying up in the town of Marree in a different way. They of course were Islamic, so they were termed Afghans. They then termed the train the Afghan Express. I think they came from everywhere but Afghanistan, but the name stuck. But what it tells you is that the country was very multicultural, even many decades ago.

We have a rich history, and I think it is important to acknowledge that at the start of this debate, because in Victoria in 1983 I think it was the Cain government that launched the Ethnic Affairs Commission, which became the Victorian Multicultural Commission. The Ethnic Affairs Commission, when it was launched, was a trailblazer in this country, with Gary Sheppard as the inaugural chair in 1983, George Papadopoulos was then followed by Franco Schiavone. Trang Thomas, who I knew well in the 1990s under the Kennett government, was a very powerful and inspirational chair of what had then morphed into the Victorian Multicultural Commission, the VMC – from I think 1993 to 1997 Trang Thomas was there. A very good personal friend of mine Stefan Romaniw was the chair from 1997 to, from memory, 2001. George Lekakis followed Stefan, and then there was Chin Tan, Ross Alatsas, Helen Kapalos and Viv Nguyen.

What we have seen is an organisation – and I remember from when I was the minister – that other state governments wanted to emulate. They wanted to emulate it because it had a structure and independence and a role which was seen as the best in Australia. This had spanned a number of governments: the Cain, the Kirner, the Kennett, the Bracks, the Brumby, the Baillieu and the Napthine governments. It had spanned a number of governments. I remember seeing the multicultural affairs minister from New South Wales, who came down to see me – and of course I have forgotten who it was; it will probably come to me later in the debate – and they wanted emulate what we had done in Victoria because it had been so successful.

One of the points I always felt about the VMC more than anything else was that it was independent and it operated independently, and I see that in some ways being returned to in this bill, which I should have said at the start that we do not oppose. We have amendments, but we do not oppose the substance of the bill. The independence of the VMC was what set it apart from other organisations around the country. It was allowed to set policy. It was allowed to set its own agenda. It had a board which was appointed, and everyone on that board was aware of the roles, the responsibilities and the weight of responsibility they had as part of the VMC board. In times, as you get in settler countries like Australia, of difficult issues with certain communities, you had the board, which would step in and act as a mediating force ‍– a guiding force. Stefan Romaniw was very, very good at this. Even when he was off that board he would still do the same and he would still assist where he could. I know Hakan Akyol, who worked in the department there, was also very instrumental in doing that kind of work behind the scenes. This is what made the VMC so successful. But it also was able to look at its own direction when it came to what was important in funding and what should be supported, whether it was festivals or whether it was support for places of worship. The VMC, I think, was an exceptionally good body, and it set the standard for what I believed in multicultural affairs policy was important for us to achieve.

I am going to be a little political, of course – no doubt many might not like it – but that started to wane. That did start to wane about 10 years ago when the VMC and its structure became more and more overtly politicised. I said this, I think, in this chamber at the time: ‘We are undermining the best system in Australia.’ It was one that was actually established by a Labor government. We were undermining it. It had been improved by so many governments as time went on. Why were we allowing this politicisation of what had been such a good organisation to continue to occur, whether the minister was now directing the grants program and people were literally going to lobby the minister and the minister’s staff as opposed to going through the VMC, whether we started to see circumstances where the VMC was conducting events without opposition MPs, or whether you had the complete politicisation – and I will come to this – of multicultural events, which had totally undermined what had been built up over a long period of time? And yes, we have come to a stage today where literally the VMC has had to be abolished and started again.

Now we have got a new body, Multicultural Victoria, and they have to enshrine things such as independence in it. I would say you should not have to enshrine that, because multiculturalism should be part of our state’s policy agenda. If it does not work, then nothing will work for any of us – our society will fail. It is so important that we have people from all parts of the world who live in this country, for better or worse. Some people do not like it and some people do like it, but that is what our country is, and therefore it is important not to take overseas fights and make them Australian fights, egging that on and politicising this and politicising the body that is meant to intervene to calm these issues down. It is so important that we do not do that. I saw, as a supporter of multicultural policy, the undermining of what had been a good structure – an independent structure, an honourable structure – where people had put their heart and soul, as chairs and commissioners, into this organisation which was being eaten away. I was distressed by it, and I think, as I said, I mentioned that a number of times in this chamber at the time.

I did say before and I mention again that there was some politicisation of some of the events that the VMC would run. The big one was of course the Premier’s multicultural gala dinner. It was only in the last three or four years that this really started to occur, where you would have these events where government members are offered tables to invite people. These are taxpayer-funded events. These are not Liberal Party or Labor Party or Greens or National Party events. These are events which are there to unite Victorians. We have a bigger sense of purpose in this place, which I think a lot of people sometimes forget. We are here to represent the state. It is not to pick and choose or to divide by ethnic policy or to say ‘You’re this’ and ‘You’re that’. We can get into that if you like, because I have certainly got a list and I can get into that as well. At the end of the day those events – particularly the Premier’s multicultural gala dinner – were ones where the Premier, who was the technical host, and the Leader of the Opposition would come along with other members of Parliament. Usually the minister and the shadow minister and other representatives from other parties would be asked to come along. It was about showcasing so much of our state in multicultural policy that united us as Victorians, whatever community they were from. You could say, ‘I don’t get along with this community,’ but all of that was forgotten on the night. People had a great time, and it was so important.

But what we saw was those events becoming rawly and nakedly political and the speeches becoming divisive. The speeches were focusing on politics, and they were never that; they were never intended to be. They certainly were not that under the Bracks government. They were not that under the Baillieu government. They certainly were not that under the Kennett government. They were events which brought Victorians together as Victorians. I say it again: under previous Labor governments it was not that either. The multicultural gala dinner cost $438,000, and effectively the last one became a rally for the government and government MPs. This, as I said, I found distressing.

Members interjecting.

Matthew GUY: It is true, because I have been to more of them than you, and I know what they look like, and I can tell you that one was. I thought that was a quite an unfortunate politicisation of an area of government policy that should be above politics.

The Premier’s Diwali state reception was similar. Here is an important event to a growing community in our society, the South Asian community, and it should have been one which was so important to celebrate for the Indian community. One just has to look at the pictures that were issued on social media, particularly by the then Premier, on the night, and they will get very clearly an understanding of what it was. It was a rally for one side of politics – a sales pitch – and the speeches on the night prove it. I found it difficult to understand. We had the government MPs making, on that night, election promises: ‘We’re going to do this, and we’re going to do this, and only this government will do this,’ which was completely out of kilter with what those events should have been.

Wayne Farnham interjected.

Matthew GUY: It was in bad taste, as the member for Narracan said. That is exactly what it was.

Belinda Wilson interjected.

Matthew GUY: If we want to go down that path, we can mention to the chamber that this is what happens when governments get ahead of themselves with these promises. The Gandhi statue that was promised two premiers ago has not appeared. The Indian aged care facility for $11 million, which was promised, never has appeared. The park out in I think Tarneit that was promised never appeared. The half-a-dozen temple promises that were made through Blackburn, Lyndhurst and Clyde were never fulfilled. If we want to go through all of those, we can. We can go through all of those, but at the end of the day it should have been above this, and this bill should have been above it.

The fact we have had to get today a new multicultural amendment bill to restructure the VMC because the government nakedly politicised a body which was never politicised by the government’s predecessors, Labor or coalition, says it all. The fact we are here to do this, to have to clean up literally their own mess, says it all. The fact is that we have had in the last three years people sitting on the Victorian Multicultural Commission who have been either retweeting or issuing tweets which are totally and utterly divisive to sections of our community. I said at the start and I say again that the VMC was there to unite Victorians. It was there as the body to intervene if there were problems between communities. What we had was one individual in particular – I have mentioned him a number of times in this chamber; I do not intend to mention him again – who was issuing tweets against what he can say are overseas conflicts. It has a direct correlation to Australia if you are sitting on the multicultural commission as a commissioner and you are filing off names and abuse to a community when you are meant to be there in Victoria as one of the unifying figures between a community and another community. The government’s response at the time was simply to say, ‘The matter is being investigated.’ What was the outcome of that investigation? Was he stood down? No, he was not. Was he disciplined? Apparently not. Did the minister have anything to say following the one comment in the newspaper? No, never followed up. The then Premier had nothing to say on it either, which was stunning because, as I said from the start, this whole body is about uniting Victorians.

I looked at the Making Multicultural Victoria: 40 Years of the Victorian Multicultural Commission, 1983–2023 document yesterday. I looked at it with great interest and went through it with great interest. The then minister – I am not sure if she was the minister; there have been so many changes – in the report made all the right sounds and said all the right things, but at the end of the day we have people sitting on that commission who should not be there, because they are not interested in unifying our state and making comments about unifying our state.

The bill does abolish the VMC and replace it with a new body called Multicultural Victoria, and that is made up of a multicultural coordinator general and two deputy multicultural coordinators general, one of whom I understand must reside or have previously resided in rural or regional Victoria. That in itself is something we do not oppose. But what we have a shock about is that the government have already sought to advertise for this position. The bill has not even passed the Parliament. This position is already being advertised with a view to appoint this position just before an election. Forgive the cynic in me. I am getting older and I am getting more cynical. My kids are getting to teenage years, so they backchat more. I am a little more cynical than I probably was about five or 10 years ago, but I just cannot work it out. If you really were sincere about getting the best for multicultural policy and multiculturalism in Victoria, wouldn’t you actually say, ‘Look, we’re going to do this right. We’ll send the bill through the Parliament. We’ve got the VMC and we’ve got an acting chair in there, who is managing for now,’ which they are, and they seem to be going fine, managing as they do, ‘and we will get to this after we’ve had the Lekakis review. We’ll get into this when it is the sensible time to do so when the bill has been through the Parliament and has gone through royal assent, and off we go.’ No, we are advertising. One can only say that that is just an attempt by the government to make an appointment and fulfil a position with someone who I suspect will simply be of a certain brand of politics as opposed to –

Members interjecting.

Matthew GUY: Make a liar of me, if you like. I will wait and see. We will come back in a couple of weeks time and make a liar of me. But I suspect, given it is being advertised now, that is what you would have to expect anyone on this side of the chamber would obviously think, given what we have just seen at the Premier’s gala dinner, the Diwali dinner and others, which were good ideas and good dinners, which have been blatantly politicised with political speeches at them. This is the party, I might add, that preferenced the Australian Greens, and we have seen what they have done in this chamber and the references they have made to the Jewish community.

Lauren Kathage: What about you and One Nation?

Matthew GUY: I was hoping you would ask that, because I have the preference cards from the 2022 election. I noted in the upper house on the preference wheel that the Labor Party –

Members interjecting.

Matthew GUY: Oh, now we are changing the guidelines. You change the debate because you do not want to hear the answer. I have not even said it yet. I noticed that the Labor Party on that preference wheel had One Nation higher than the Liberals, yet apparently there is this secret deal that is all going to be exposed by the following speakers. I will be interested to hear of this deal and how awful it was. The Labor Party will say how awful it apparently is to preference One Nation. We are going to see this. I will be Nostradamus: the following speakers from the government will be making a lot of comment about how awful it is to preference the One Nation party, yet I noticed that on the preference wheel at the 2022 election and, I believe, in 2018 as well, the Australian Labor Party on their preference wheel in some regions had the One Nation party higher than the coalition. I just wanted to put a little bit of consistency and honesty into this argument.

Belinda Wilson: You can’t win government without One Nation.

Matthew GUY: You probably cannot be there without the Greens. Through you, Acting Speaker, I will pick up the member’s interjection. You have got to be careful what you throw. If you are going to throw something, you have got to make sure it does not come back like a boomerang at you, because some things do.

I simply say, in conclusion, that this bill is one we do not oppose. I have got a reasoned amendment, which I will now formally move in my name, and that is in relation to – I am being looked at by the clerks. Let us just pause that for now. I will just continue speaking, and you can indicate to me at the end if there is one. If there is not, I will do it later, or someone else will. But what I will say is this bill is one that in my view probably should not have had to come to this because we should have had the VMC operating like it always was, which was as a strong independent body which lasted from the Cain government – and it was a good idea of the Cain government – to the Napthine government. Surely – and I said this last night in a contribution on consistency of policy – it tells you that it was a good idea of a government back in 1983 that it has managed to last 30-plus years. That tells you that that government had a good idea and that the state recognised that. Multiple governments believed in consistency of policy and consistency of approach and improved that policy position as time went on, so I think credit to them at that time. But it is a shame that we have had to now come in to repair the mess that the government created themselves around the VMC and create a new body to literally enshrine independence because they could not manage to do that themselves when every other government for the last 35 years before them had managed to do that.

 Paul HAMER (Box Hill – Minister for Roads and Road Safety) (12:32): I rise today to support the Multicultural Victoria Amendment Bill 2026. I will start by reassuring you, Acting Speaker Walters, that I will not be talking about preference deals in my contribution, but I want to firstly acknowledge your capacity as Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs, which is a role in which you served with distinction for a number of years. I know what a diverse community you have in your own seat and how much of a role you have taken on with now successive ministers. It is a very important, critical role in our multicultural state, and we have leaders such as you and of course the new minister and the former minister to lead from the front on our multicultural community.

This bill is about ensuring that the way that the government engages with Victoria’s multicultural and multifaith communities reflects the reality of the state we live in today. It establishes Multicultural Victoria, bringing together community engagement, policy development and grants administration into a single entity with a goal of strengthening the voice of multicultural communities in government decision-making. I want to talk a little bit about my own electorate of Box Hill, one of the most diverse electorates in Victoria. Every day I see the success of multiculturalism. It is not an abstract policy concept but a lived reality. You can see it in the streets, you can see it in the family-run businesses across the electorate and you can see it in our places of worship, our community organisations, our sporting clubs and of course our schools. You can see it in the remarkable stories of migration, resilience and opportunity that have helped shape our community. One of the great privileges of being a member, as other members will no doubt attest, is being able to welcome people from all corners of the world into our world and into our community, particularly through citizenship ceremonies but also through all other walks of life.

Over the last eight years as a member I have joined countless Lunar New Year celebrations with Chinese community organisations. I have celebrated Diwali with our Indian community, Orthodox Easter with our Greek community and Nowruz, the Persian New Year, with our Iranian community, to name just a few. I have visited migrant-owned businesses that started with little more than a dream and a willingness to work hard, and I have listened to newly arrived migrants building new lives. Thanks to my wonderful multilingual staff, my electorate office has been able to assist hundreds of migrant community members not only to better navigate government services but to connect with their local community and build their capacity to participate and contribute and feel a stronger sense of belonging in the place that they call home. Over and over I hear the same message: people want to contribute. They want to be part of this country, they want to belong and they want their voices to be heard. This is exactly what this bill seeks to strengthen.

As I have said, our multicultural communities are amongst the greatest strengths of our electorate and electorates across Victoria. Our Chinese community has helped transform Box Hill into one of Melbourne’s most vibrant commercial and cultural centres. The success of Box Hill’s multicultural business precinct reflects the entrepreneurship, the determination and the hard work of thousands of local families. Throughout the year I am honoured to join my local community in celebrating the most important traditional festivals of the community from Chinese New Year to the dragon boat festival, mid-autumn festival and many more. A shout-out to all of our wonderful community organisations. There are far too many to mention, but the big ones that organise events every year without fail are organisations such as the Asian Business Association of Whitehorse, the Melbourne Taiwanese Chamber of Commerce and the Chinese Health Foundation of Australia. They create business opportunities and connections, preserve and celebrate cultural traditions, support people when they need it most and strengthen the social cohesion that makes our community such a great place to live. Just last weekend I had the honour of representing our new Premier Ben Carroll at the Asian Business Association of Whitehorse award gala dinner. It was a wonderful celebration of businesses not just across the Box Hill electorate and across Whitehorse but across the broader Victorian community. Over 600 people were at that event, and it was a full, multicultural celebration not just for the Chinese community but for people from all of our very diverse cultures throughout Victoria. It was a wonderful evening, and I want to give my thanks and pay tribute to president Bihong Wang and vice-president Richard Shi for organising a wonderful event.

Our Indian and South Asian communities continue to grow and are making important contributions in community service, education, health care, technology and small business. I just want to pick up a point that the lead speaker of the opposition raised about the Sikh gurdwara in Blackburn, an absolutely wonderful establishment in our electorate. They have actually been working on and delivering the extension and upgrade of that building that was funded by this Labor government. Every day of the year they provide free meals to individuals. You do not have to be Sikh to turn up and have a meal at the gurdwara; they are providing it as a community service every single day of the year, with huge numbers of volunteers coming in every day to serve food for those in need.

Our Greek community have a wonderful and proud history in Box Hill and are still in the same premises and church that they have been in for 50 or 60 years. We know that Greek Australians have helped shape so many parts of our community but particularly in Box Hill and the greater Box Hill area. The Iranian community is a newer community in the Box Hill area, but it is again a really valued part of Box Hill’s multicultural story. They have been through some very difficult times this year, and I want to thank and give a shout-out to the Australian-Iranian Society of Victoria and all the other many community groups that represent the Iranian community for their dedication and getting through this very difficult time that has happened over the last six to 12 months. I want to put on the record my support for the community: know that I will always be there for you with your community. Of course there are many other representatives from almost every other community. We had the census last night, and I am sure the updated census figures will just remind everyone how important and how valuable our multicultural communities and how diverse each and every one of our communities are.

Before I finish, in the couple of minutes I have left I do want to obviously reflect on my own heritage. I have spoken numerous times in this place about my Jewish heritage and the value and the importance that Jewish Australians have placed in being part of a multicultural society and multicultural community here in Australia. The heritage of the Jewish community in Australia runs long and deep. In Melbourne, for example, the building itself of the congregation that I belong to is celebrating its 150th anniversary next year. The broader congregation is 20 years older than that. These roots go back to the very establishment of European settlement in Melbourne, and they are links here to the present day that continue that multicultural connection, proving that you can be both a proud Jew or proud Iranian or proud Chinese person and also be a proud Australian, and a very proud Australian.

All these communities came to Australia because Australia gave them hope, and that experience has shaped my beliefs about the kind of society that we should strive to be. We are strongest when we reject division. We are strongest when we recognise that diversity is not a threat but an asset. That is why Victoria’s multicultural success story deserves to be protected and strengthened, and that is why I strongly support this bill to the house.

 Kim O’KEEFFE (Shepparton) (12:42): I rise to speak on the Multicultural Victoria Amendment Bill 2026. This is a really important bill before the house. This bill proposes to replace the existing Victorian Multicultural Commission with a new body, Multicultural Victoria, and follows recommendations from Victoria’s multicultural review led by George Legakis, which delivered 41 ‍recommendations to reform state policies and social cohesion.

The Shepparton district is proudly one of the most culturally diverse regional communities in Australia and stands as a shining example of how people from different cultures, backgrounds and faiths can come together to build a strong, cohesive and successful community. Shepparton and the region’s success story has been built on migration. For decades people from diverse backgrounds have come to our region seeking opportunity, contributing their skills, establishing businesses, enriching our culture and helping to build the thriving, successful region we are proud of today.

I grew up with people from different cultures, many of whom are my closest friends today. Our street growing up was made up of migrants from Italy, people from Greece and Albanians. I have had the joy of meeting so many wonderful people during my lifetime from many different cultures, also across my community, and I get to share so many amazing events and experiences. I also get to support them wherever I can. I am proud to also be the Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Multicultural Affairs. People from more than 70 nationalities and language groups call Shepparton and the region home, bringing with them rich traditions, languages, faiths, skills and experiences that have helped shape the community we know and love today. Our diversity is our strength, and our future is brighter because of it.

Our multicultural communities are not only contributors to our economy but leaders, volunteers, educators, health workers, business owners, sporting champions and community advocates. They give generously of their time and their talents, helping create a welcoming and inclusive community for everyone. I am proud of the way our community embraces and celebrates our many cultures and our cultural diversity. We see this diversity celebrated in many ways through cultural festivals, food, music, dance and community events that bring people together and foster understanding and respect. These occasions remind us that while our backgrounds may be different, our shared values of family, community and hard work unite us. One of the best examples is Converge on the Goulburn, where hundreds of people come together to join the many cultures on our lake who proudly share their traditions, food, music and performances with the whole community. It is a wonderful reflection of the united and welcoming community we are proud to be part of.

It is also amazing to have people like Azem, who I have spoken about before in this place. Azem came from Macedonia over 30 years ago, and he wants to give back to the country that has given him so much. He supports the homeless and the most vulnerable people in our community with meals through his cafe. He provides a shower and a toilet at the back and tents, blankets or whatever is needed. He is loved and strongly supported by the community so he can do the great work that he does for all. I am so grateful to have so many representatives in the multicultural community who do care very deeply for their communities and the place that they call home.

Cammy, who is of Indian descent, is a local business owner and a community leader. Cammy has become such a local community champion, advocating for increased bus services, crime prevention in the Shepparton CBD and supporting many events and sporting events that bring hundreds of people to our region. He is so proud to run a business and raise his family in Shepparton, and he has a strong message across the multicultural community that we all belong.

It is important that people from all backgrounds have access to the support they need, feel connected to their communities and experience a genuine sense of belonging. This bill must be meaningful and ensure that multicultural communities are supported, understood and included, not disadvantaged or left behind in any way. When we meaningfully engage with communities, we are better able to learn from our successes and challenges to continuously improve. When we work together, we are better able to stand up for respect, unity and belonging.

The bill aims to create a stronger, more coordinated and less fragmented approach to multicultural affairs, creating stronger leadership, greater community input, better government accountability, improved language services and a whole-of-government approach to supporting Victoria’s multicultural and multifaith communities. The bill amends the Multicultural Victoria Act 2011 to abolish the Victorian Multicultural Commission and replace it with a new body called Multicultural Victoria, made up of a multicultural coordinator general and two deputy multicultural coordinators, one of whom must reside, or have previously resided, in rural or regional Victoria. It will abolish existing regional advisory councils and replace them with a ministerially established multicultural community advisory group, which will have five to nine members, at least one aged 18 to 24, plus new Multicultural Victoria established regional engagement groups covering the whole state.

One of the key responsibilities of the multicultural coordinator general will be to lead systematic and wideranging consultation to hear directly from our multicultural communities about their experiences, priorities and needs and report on these to the government. Multicultural Victoria will also have a legislated obligation to report back to those it has engaged with, to explain what action it has taken in respect of the matters raised and to ensure that the engagement has impact. The multicultural coordinator general will have new powers to drive change for multicultural and multifaith communities across government, including strengthened powers in relation to whole-of-government planning and accountability. New annual reporting requirements will require publication of a yearly state of Multicultural Victoria report. The report will reflect community feedback, measure progress across government and identify gaps and areas needing improvement.

I would like to acknowledge the outstanding work of organisations such as the Ethnic Council of Shepparton and District, community leaders, multicultural associations, faith groups and volunteers who work tirelessly to support settlement, inclusion and community connection. Their efforts help ensure people feel welcomed, valued and able to participate fully in community life. I have a very close friendship with the CEO of the Shepparton ethnic council, Sam Atukorala, and I have seen firsthand how the multicultural community has been supported by his dedicated, compassionate and supportive leadership. I have worked very closely with Sam over many years supporting our multicultural communities, and we have worked closely during the most challenging times of crisis, including the pandemic and the 2022 floods. We saw firsthand the disconnection that can occur when language is a barrier and the difficulty of communication that can lead to confusion, distress and risk of harm. Evidence presented to the parliamentary inquiry into the 2022 flood event in Victoria, along with reports from multicultural organisations, found many people struggled to access timely information in their preferred language, were unfamiliar with emergency systems or faced difficulties understanding what support was available. During the pandemic there were so many challenges – ensuring all people were able to access the information, help and support they needed was difficult.

With the few minutes I have remaining I just want to also talk about a young boy who works in my office. I have Safa employed in my office as a casual, and Safa is my youth community engagement officer and youth adviser. Safa is from Afghanistan and has been in Australia for only three years and lives with his mother and three sisters. He could not speak English when he arrived in this country, and it is incredible how far he has come. Safa attended the Shepparton English Language Centre for six months before going into mainstream school. He is in year 12 and wants to be a doctor. He is a shining example of someone who has come from a different country and background, has immersed himself in the community, has become a well-known and respected youth community leader and is embracing the opportunities afforded to him and his family. Safa has been a guest speaker, sharing his story at many events and on many occasions, and was also asked to speak at this year’s Anzac dawn service. I am proud of what Safa is achieving. He is leading the way for others. I am proud to have him on my team, and I cannot wait to see what he achieves. Safa also led the way for a youth forum held back in March this year. We had 36 young leaders attend that forum from very many multicultural and diverse backgrounds. It was so important to hear their voices and to hear the challenges that they are experiencing as young people. In this place we have a duty to make sure that young people are able to contribute to the many conversations that impact on their communities and impact on them.

It is a really important time for us to think about the challenges faced by multicultural communities. At no point in time is there any way that we should accept any form of discrimination. We must stand shoulder to shoulder in communities, and my community is a really shining example that does that. I am so grateful to have a community that does stand up, that does speak up and that also champions the many cultures that we stand with within our communities. I am really grateful to feel that our community is accepting, and I hope that our community shines a shining example of what can be. Yes, we have some challenges – no community is perfect – but what I see is people leading by example. I see the younger people leading by example, standing up for what they believe, standing up to discrimination, calling it out. I am really proud to have someone like Safa in my office, who shows opportunity and possibilities in sharing his story and culture. That should never change. It is sharing that culture in the country that you live in and embracing the future together.

 Gary MAAS (Narre Warren South) (12:52): It gives me great pleasure to rise today to speak to the Multicultural Victoria Amendment Bill 2026 and to do so representing my community of Narre Warren South, which is one of the most multicultural areas in the state. I have had the great pleasure of representing my community for the last eight years and all of the fantastic, wonderful diversity that comes with it. I know the importance of the institutions and the frameworks that support our multicultural communities, and I know that having those supports and those frameworks in place is absolutely essential. But it is also personal to them. As someone who, like many of us here, has their own story of migration to this magnificent state, with my family making the journey from Sri Lanka to Australia for a better life, it is also personal to me. It is important that we have these frameworks in place. It is important that we have these institutions that better support new Australians, new Victorians into our community. The institutions that I speak to have been formed through decades of trust which has been built between government and indeed the Parliament and our communities. The work helps ensure that decisions which are made are made with the input of the people – by the people, if you like ‍– and those who are most impacted by them as well.

But this is coming at a time when we know that the world is going through great change, and that is having an effect locally as well. We have the rise of extremist parties, and it is really significant at this time to speak about this government’s continued commitment to a diverse and inclusive state, one where all people feel very safe to express who they are, what they believe in, who they belong to, what they want to be and indeed who they want to be. Through this bill the Carroll Labor government is strengthening the way that it works with Victoria’s multicultural and indeed multifaith communities.

It is hard not to speak to Pauline Hanson and One Nation, but they have already threatened to abolish multicultural organisations and the departments that support those organisations for so many Victorians who rely on these institutions. They have already said that they will destroy those, and that members of that party may one day be sitting in this house putting those extremist views forward in this place is something that I am certainly really afraid of, because quite frankly you simply do not defend social cohesion by dismantling the institutions that help sustain it, that make Victoria the democracy that it is. Our state Labor government will not allow that to happen, and that is why we are progressing this bill to ensure the security of our multicultural institutions and to protect them indeed from a Liberal–One Nation coalition.

The bill itself goes to ensuring more voices are represented and heard right across our state. It delivers on recommendations that were made in Victoria’s multicultural review, which was led by George Lekakis and an expert advisory group, as commissioned by our government back in 2024. The review was in response to global conflicts, the cost-of-living pressures and the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, which were impacting all Victorians but placing a real strain on multicultural communities across the state. After hearing from hundreds of people and peak bodies about the needs of multicultural Victorians, the review found that those needs of this group have changed and therefore the institutions and the frameworks too should change. So the review called for measures to better respond and reinforce unity and inclusion, and that is what this bill has delivered upon.

It would be remiss of me not to speak to the Victorian Multicultural Commission and the department of multicultural affairs. We all know that the VMC has made an incredible contribution, and I would like to thank all of those commissioners who I personally have had the chance to work with, and of course Viv Nguyen AM, who has just finished her tenure. I think everyone in this place would agree that she has just been absolutely terrific as VMC chairperson. But the change that is being proposed will help ensure that multicultural communities can be confident that their concerns are heard at the very, very highest levels of government. This needs to be the case because in Victoria we come from over 300 different ancestries, we speak more than 290 languages and we practise almost 200 faiths. The City of Casey, where Narre Warren South sits, is home to 160 different languages which are spoken at home and more than 100 different faiths which are practised. But multiculturalism is not just about the demographics, the numbers or the statistics; it is the mutual understanding and respect for equality and the opportunities that our state can provide to either people who are escaping crisis through upheaval or war in their own country or those who simply make the journey here for peace of mind and for a better life.

Australia, and Victoria indeed, is the home of the fair go. We have not subscribed to a class system or wealth hierarchy or monarchy that defines who has access and opportunities. Our country is built on treating people fairly with that notion of the fair go, and we cannot let others destroy these institutions and gut their funding. I commend this bill to the house, and I do so because I am afraid that in future there will be a move to remove the protections and support for our multicultural and multifaith communities. With this bill I hope that our multicultural communities know that we are giving them the confidence and the permission to say to others that they cannot be chastised just because they are new Australians to this place. This cannot be allowed to happen, and that is why I commend this bill to the house.

Sitting suspended 1:00 pm until 2:02 pm.

Business interrupted under standing orders.