Meadow Heights mosque
Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (13:23): It was great to attend on the weekend the open day for the Meadow Heights mosque in my electorate of Northern Metropolitan. I particularly want to acknowledge the president of Islamic Community Milli Gorus Australia Ramazan Otkun, the president of Meadow Heights mosque Hasan Guresen, the president of the Brunswick mosque Recep Aktep and Fatih Buyukyazici from Ilim College. Put on by the Islamic Council of Victoria and ICMG Australia, these open days help provide the community and us as politicians greater understanding of the contribution faith communities make to our great state. It was a pleasure to be joined by former Liberal candidates for Broadmeadows and Greenvale Mr Baris Duzova and Usman Ghani to reinforce that the Liberal Party is the party of multicultural Victoria and does preselect candidates that look and sound like the communities they represent. It was great to be greeted with such a warm reception by the community and terrific to see so many stalls fundraising for the relief efforts in Türkiye and Syria. Through ICMG Youth Australia I was in deep admiration for the work that the mosque does to support and mentor young people who, like me, are big fans of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and are keen to watch and even train at their community centre to try to get those young people on the straight and narrow, supported by mentors in their community. I very much enjoyed the gozleme and Turkish coffee, and I thank again those at the Meadow Heights mosque for the warm reception they gave me – hopefully the first of many.